SpaceX (SPCX) Stock Soars After Russell 1000 Addition, But History Has a Warning

TLDR

• SpaceX stock jumped 7.2% on Monday, closing at $164.19 after joining the Russell 1000 index.
• The stock is still well off its post-IPO record high of $225.64, hit in mid-June.
• SpaceX will join the Nasdaq-100 on July 7, which could bring more buying from index funds.
• Elon Musk said he’d be “disappointed” if SpaceX didn’t beat $100 billion in 2028 revenue estimates.
• History shows mega-IPOs often struggle in their first year, and a major share unlock is coming in August.

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SpaceX (SPCX) stock climbed 7.2% on Monday to close at $164.19. The move came as the company officially joined the Russell 1000 index.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., SPCX

That’s a solid pop, but it’s worth keeping some perspective here. The stock is still trading well below its post-IPO high of $225.64, set just days after its June 12 debut.

SpaceX shares were added to the Russell 1000 after Friday’s close. Monday marked the first full trading day with that index inclusion in place.

S&P Global, however, passed on fast-tracking SpaceX into its own indexes. The reason comes down to simple supply and demand.

Only about 86 million SpaceX shares are currently available to trade. That’s a tiny fraction of the more than 13 billion shares outstanding, and too few to handle a flood of passive S&P 500 buying right now.

More float should open up over the next six months. Until then, the bigger near-term catalyst is the Nasdaq-100, which SpaceX joins on July 7.

That inclusion should bring buying from funds like the Invesco QQQ ETF. All three indexes use a float-weighted approach, so the actual market impact depends on tradable shares rather than total shares outstanding.

Musk Talks Up Revenue Targets

Elon Musk also added some fuel to the rally over the weekend. Responding to a post about SpaceX hitting $100 billion in revenue by 2028, he wrote he’d be “disappointed” if the company didn’t blow past that number.

Wall Street’s current estimate sits around $103 billion for 2028, so Musk isn’t exactly going out on a limb here. He also claimed SpaceX’s Grok 4.5 AI model could outperform rivals from Anthropic.

Grok originally came from xAI, which merged with SpaceX back in February. That entity has since been dissolved entirely into SpaceX.

Monday’s gain looks even better against the broader market backdrop. The S&P 500 rose 1.2% and the Dow gained 0.6%, both trailing SpaceX’s move by a wide margin.

At current prices, SpaceX carries a valuation of roughly $2 trillion. The stock’s post-IPO low was $147.11, still comfortably above its $135 IPO price.

What History Says About Mega-IPOs

SpaceX raised $85.7 billion in its IPO, more than doubling the previous record. But only about 4% of the company’s equity was actually sold to public investors.

That matters because of what comes next: dilution. Insider and early-investor shares start unlocking soon, with the first batch arriving in August.

That first unlock alone will double the number of shares available for public trading. History isn’t exactly kind to giant, hyped IPOs in their first year, either.

Facebook, Rivian, and Robinhood all posted steep first-year losses after their debuts. Even Saudi Aramco, one of the largest IPOs ever, fell 23.3% in its first three months.

A Truist study of the 30 largest recent IPOs found average returns of roughly -9% at both the six-month and twelve-month marks. Bigger, more mature companies have historically fared better than smaller ones, according to research from University of Florida professor Jay Ritter.

SpaceX was valued at around $500 billion just a year ago, including xAI. That means a massive amount of growth has already been priced into the current $2 trillion-plus valuation, well before the August share unlock arrives.