SpaceX shows why quarterly earnings may be nebulous

Financial Times Europe6 Aug 2026

It is always a happy occa sion when a newly lis ted com pany reports its quarterlyearn ings for the first time, and they beat ana lysts’ expect a tions. SpaceX did that onTues day. But if ever there were a case to be made that quarterly fin an cial state -ments are point less — a view pro posed by the US mar ket reg u lator — Elon Musk’srocket maker surely strengthens it.

SpaceX did bet ter than ana lysts expec ted on most of the import ant meas ure ments.Rev enue increased by 92 per cent year on year; losses nar rowed, mostly because ofits profi t able satel lite com mu nic a tions busi ness, Starlink. This is some what facesav ing for Musk, after the 44 per cent fall in SpaceX shares from their peak in June.

What has happened to SpaceX’s fin ances over the past three months is, though,pretty much irrel ev ant. Its long-term goals, after all, include col on ising Mars, aster -oid min ing and build ing a “mass accel er ator” — a kind of giant mag netic cata pult —on the Moon. Right now, its income is derived from selling broad band and rent ingdata centres, activ it ies that accoun ted for just 14 per cent of the “total address ablemar ket” Musk sketched out in SpaceX’s pro spectus.

The scale of hoped-for growth makes a mock ery of short-term shifts. SpaceX’s top-billing IPO under writer, Gold man Sachs, reck ons that its rev enue will go from anannu al ised $31bn now to $846bn in five years. Along the way, it may notch up acumu lat ive $350bn or so in neg at ive free cash flow.

Musk, for what it’s worth, fore sees $1tn of rev enue by 2030. Who cares what hap -pens between now and Septem ber?

There are more use ful sign posts, of a non-account ing vari ety. One is the pro gress ofSpaceX’s reusable Star ship rocket, which com pleted its 13th test flight last month.Musk has yet to launch his ves sel or catch its car go car ry ing sec tion on its return butplans to do so by the end of this month. Get ting Star ship right is a more use ful steptowards real ising Musk’s space dreams than any rev enue mile stone.

With much of SpaceX’s value rest ing in things that don’t yet exist, valu ing the com -pany is a crap shoot. Look at the wide spread of ana lysts’ price tar gets. The 34 col -lated by Bloomberg have a “coeffi  cient of vari ation” — an indic a tion of howscattered they are — of 50 per cent. Apple, Nvidia and Meta score 15 per cent. At themore pre dict able end, Wal mart, the largest US retailer, comes in at 8 per cent.

Even if cur rent fin an cials did give some ink ling of SpaceX’s pro spects, they wouldoffer no clues about the other big vari able in the com pany’s valu ation: a poten tialmer ger with $1tn sis ter com pany Tesla.

Musk denies plans to crunch his space ven tures together with his elec tric-carmaker, but even some of his under writers have openly mused on the pos sib il ity;JPMor gan called the idea “com pel ling”.

The terms of a Tesla mer ger, or its tim ing, are unknow able. If it hap pens, Musk’scon trolling stake could make other share hold ers’ views math em at ic ally mean ing -less.

That kind of unpre dict ab il ity makes short-term profit swings seem even moretrivial. Ditch ing quarterly earn ings may not be a great idea for the US mar ket over -all but, for SpaceX investors, it’s hard to see what dif fer ence it would make