SpaceX Stock Fell Back to Its Debut Price. The Post-IPO Selloff Is Following an Old Script

Summary

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) priced the largest IPO in history at $135 per share on June 12, raising $75 billion, and opened for trading at $150 [1]. Three sessions later the stock hit an intraday record of $225.64. By June 23 it had given nearly all of that back, touching $147.11 and briefly pulling the market cap below $2 trillion [2][3]. Shares have since climbed back to about $170.86 as of July 1, still roughly 24% under the peak [3].

One detail worth stating plainly, because it keeps getting blurred in coverage: SPCX never traded below its $135 IPO price. What broke was the $150 opening trade, a different line, and the one most retail buyers actually paid [2]. The low sat about 9% above the IPO price before the bounce.

What changed

The reversal took five trading sessions and had no earnings report behind it. SpaceX won't publish its first quarter as a public company until August 6 [3]. The selling clustered around a handful of concrete worries instead.

The biggest was debt. Days after raising $75 billion in the offering, the company announced a $25 billion bond issuance, and that extra leverage on top of a stretched valuation unsettled buyers [4]. The stock fell 16% on Monday, June 22 alone, a roughly $400 billion single-day loss of market value, after dropping 3.6% and 5% in the two prior sessions [2].

Valuation did the rest of the work. At $2.25 trillion, SpaceX carries trailing EPS of −$2.94; the launch business and Starlink generate cash, but the consolidated company still loses money, largely on the xAI side [3]. Two structural features amplified the swings. Around 30% of the offering went to individual investors, versus closer to 10% in a typical IPO, and retail books built on enthusiasm tend to sell faster than institutional ones when momentum turns [5]. At least 25 SPCX-linked ETFs were registered by the first day of trading, more than half of them leveraged or inverse products that mechanically magnify daily moves [1]. Insider lockups expiring in the coming months added a further overhang [4].

Why it matters

The historical comparisons deserve attention precisely because they diverge. Facebook priced at $38 in May 2012, barely held that line on day one, and fell more than 50% within months. The stock bottomed near $17.55 that September, as the first insider lockup released 271 million shares, and needed about 14 months to reclaim its IPO price [6][7]. It then became one of the best-performing large caps of the decade. Coinbase listed in 2021 at peak crypto enthusiasm with a $381 reference price and traded near $62 two years later, an 84% decline, before recovering in the next cycle [8].

Rivian is the counterexample. It fell below its $78 IPO price within two months of its heavily hyped November 2021 debut and, as of mid-2026, still sits roughly 88% below its debut price [9].

What separates the recoveries from the casualties isn't visible on the chart. It's the business underneath. Facebook was profitable and adding users at record pace while its stock was being dumped. Rivian was burning billions with production still ramping. SpaceX sits between those poles: launch is dominant, Starlink produces recurring revenue, and management says the core operation has been cash-flow positive for years [1] — but xAI loses money, consolidated earnings are negative, and the balance sheet just absorbed $25 billion of new bonds. Which camp SPCX belongs to will be decided by its filings, starting in August, not by June's tape.

What to watch

Four dates and one number. July 7: SPCX joins the Nasdaq-100 after an unusually fast-tracked inclusion, which obliges index funds to buy [3]. August 6: the first earnings report, and the first segment-level look at launch, Starlink, and xAI as a public company [3]. Late 2026: insider lockups, typically 90 to 180 days after listing, begin to expire [10] — the event that set the durable low in the Facebook case [7]. Ongoing: how the bond market absorbs the $25 billion issuance, since credit pricing is a cleaner read on institutional confidence than the equity tape.

The number: sell-side price targets currently run from $62 to $310 [3]. A spread that wide means the market has not agreed on what kind of company this is. Until it narrows, volatility like June's is the base case, not the exception.