Newsletter · · Ashutosh Agarwal

SpaceX Post IPO Plunge Sets Up an August Reckoning - The Satellite & Space-Comms Race - Week of July 24, 2026

Satellite and space-comms podcast synthesis for the week of July 17-24, 2026. SpaceX has round-tripped below its $135 IPO price with short interest near 32% ahead of an August 4 first earnings report and an August 6 insider-lockup wave, AST SpaceMobile surprised the market with another $1 billion convertible, and AT&T's CEO framed satellite as a complementary gap-filler with no peer access for SpaceX.

The Satellite & Space-Comms Race

Week of July 24, 2026: SpaceX Post IPO Plunge Sets Up an August Reckoning

A month ago, the whole space-comms conversation was about how high SpaceX could go. This week it was about how low. The most valuable private company ever to go public has round-tripped from a June peak near $225 back below its $135 IPO price, short sellers have swarmed it, and the calendar now has two dates circled in red: August 4, its first earnings report as a public company, and roughly 48 hours later, the moment insiders can finally start selling. Everything else in the sector this week (AST SpaceMobile's surprise capital raise, AT&T telling investors satellites are a friend not a foe, a Starship that couldn't get off the ground) is being read through the lens of that one unraveling.

TL;DR (15 seconds)

  • SpaceX is the whole story. The stock has fallen ~23% in its first 27 trading days, worse than 90% of major U.S. IPOs since 2009, and short interest has exploded from about 5% to roughly 32% of tradable shares in a month. Its first public earnings land August 4, with the first big insider-lockup wave (~911 million shares) freeing up August 6. That two-day window is the single most important event in the sector this quarter.
  • The carriers picked a side, quietly. AT&T CEO John Stankey told investors satellites are "complementary" gap-fillers that could even let AT&T retire expensive rural network gear, but the big three carriers have made clear they won't hand SpaceX peer access to their market. That's the D2D debate in a nutshell.
  • ASTS raised another $1 billion, and the true believers cheered anyway. A surprise convertible bond hammered the stock to $56 intraday, but the same advocacy podcast that howled about dilution argued the cash de-risks the story and confirmed a ~$1 billion Japan constellation deal now sitting in an official filing. Meanwhile Globalstar, Iridium, Rocket Lab, and EchoStar were all quiet on the podcasts this week.

What's new

Ranked by what actually matters for a book.

1. SpaceX: From "How High" to "How Low," With a Hard Catalyst on the Calendar

This was everywhere, so let's anchor on the two shows that did the real work.

On The Rundown (July 22), host Zaid Admani (Pundit) laid out the setup cleanly. SpaceX had fallen seven days in a row before snapping the streak, and, citing a Barron's analysis, "has dropped 23% in its first 27 days of trading, while a typical IPO over that stretch is basically flat… SpaceX has performed worse than 90% of major US IPOs since 2009." The dates that matter:

"The company just announced that their first earnings report as a public company will be on August 4th. And then just 2 days later on August 6th, up to 911 million shares will unlock."

Right now only about 693 million shares trade publicly, so that pool "will more than double on August 6th, and then by early December, the tradable share count jumps to over 5 billion shares." No surprise, then, that SpaceX "has now become one of the most shorted stocks in the market. About 32% of SpaceX traded shares are now sold short. A month ago, that number was around 5%." Musk has noticed, quoting his X post that "the survival probability of people maintaining a significant short position on SpaceX over time is very low." Admani's bottom line: "this August 4th earnings report from SpaceX might be the most important earnings of the quarter, maybe even the year."

The Compound and Friends (July 21) put numbers on the lockup mechanics. Josh Brown (Investor, CEO, Ritholtz Wealth) walked through the staggered schedule: within two days of the August 4 report, the first tranche, another 7% of shares outstanding, releases, taking the freely-traded float "from 3% of shares currently trading now up to 12%… a quadrupling in the amount of stock that is available for public trading." That first tranche is 911.5 million shares worth $123 billion ("It's not a typo"). Then, he said, roughly every two to three weeks another ~7% (~900 million shares) unlocks from late August through late October, and "by December 8th, the entire remaining block expires," pushing float toward 40% of the company. (Musk's own ~42% stake is separate and, both Brown and co-host Michael Batnick agreed, "he's not selling.")

Brown's call, and why it's the quote of the week for anyone circling this name:

"I think if you want to buy the stock, you're going to get an opportunity under $100 a share."

His reasoning cuts to the heart of the bear case: unlike most large IPOs, "there's no framework here for anybody serious. Like you have to like invent shit to come up with a fundamental justification for the price." A traditional analyst can anchor to 35x earnings; here, he argued, "we're talking about earnings in 10 years with this thing," so buyers are underwriting the total-addressable-market dream, not cash flows.

Why it moves numbers: This is the cleanest event-driven setup in the sector. A staggered lockup layered directly on top of first earnings means the market has to digest a fundamentals surprise and a supply shock in the same week. If earnings disappoint and insiders sell into it, the stock has little valuation floor to catch it; if earnings impress, a 32%-short book becomes squeeze fuel. And because SpaceX is now the sentiment anchor for the entire space-TAM trade, whatever happens to it will ripple straight into ASTS, RKLB, and the pre-revenue complex.

(One housekeeping note on the noise: different shows quoted different price snapshots this week. Squawk on the Street flagged the "Unlucky 7" seven-day losing streak with the stock at $120.10; The Dividend Cafe put it below $120, down ~47% from the ~$225 peak; The Compound had it around $123. And valuation labels ranged from ~$1 trillion to ~$2 trillion depending on the host. Treat the exact tick as approximate; the arc, priced $135, peaked ~$225 in June, now low-$120s, is what everyone agrees on.)

2. The Carriers Quietly Answered the D2D Question, and It Wasn't the Answer ASTS Bulls Wanted

The most under-covered but arguably most important development came from an earnings call, relayed on Bloomberg Intelligence (July 22). AT&T beat on wireless adds (roughly 100,000 more subscribers than forecast), and CEO John Stankey (Operator/Insider) framed satellite squarely as a supporting act:

"We can provide world-class networks in both wireless and fixed that tackle 98% of what a customer needs to do on the internet. Occasionally they walk off one of our networks. And as you look at our partnerships that we're working with the satellite industry, by this time next year, we'll be able to solve that problem."

Bloomberg telecom reporter Kelcee Griffis (Pundit) added the crucial nuance for anyone long the direct-to-device story. All three big carriers' stocks "have taken a pretty substantial hit over the last several weeks as speculation about what SpaceX might be up to has sort of taken off." But the carriers "have all so far made it pretty clear that they don't want to do any deals that would offer SpaceX access to the market as a peer." At least T-Mobile "is working with SpaceX to fill in some of the gaps," and Stankey sees satellite as "very complementary," useful because it could "fill some gaps in their network with satellite and potentially retire some parts of the network that are very expensive to maintain." AT&T also nudged its 2026 buyback up to $10 billion from $8 billion.

Why it moves numbers: This is the single best real-world data point on the D2D total-addressable-market debate all week, and it cuts both ways. Good for the satellite operators: a carrier CEO publicly saying satellites let him retire expensive terrestrial gear is a genuine cost-and-revenue rationale, not just marketing. Bad for the operators: "complementary gap-filler" and "no peer access" is not the language of a business the carriers plan to let anyone build a huge high-margin franchise on top of. The carriers want the coverage, on their terms, at their price.

3. ASTS Drops a Surprise $1 Billion Convertible, and Its Own Fan Base Talks Itself Off the Ledge

The only dedicated AST SpaceMobile coverage this week came from the AST SpaceMobile Podcast (July 20), an openly promotional retail-advocacy show, so treat every number as an enthusiast's read of the story, not verified financials (Investor, retail advocacy). With that giant asterisk, there was real news underneath the theatrics.

The hardware. The host said BlueBird 10 was successfully deployed, "the first composite Bluebird that was successfully unfurled," knocking down one of the last big technical questions. He also cited updated numbers showing the satellites are doing "roughly three times the spectral efficiency" he'd been modeling (in plain English: about three times more data squeezed out of the same slice of spectrum), which he said means "dollar per bit is starting to go down dramatically." He argued the factory is finally humming: from BlueWalker 3 to Block 1 took two years; the newest cadence is down to batches "just five months after FM two… and then two months after that, batch two."

The capital raise. The surprise was a $1 billion convertible bond that torched the stock intraday ("Now, was I rip shit that my stock went to $56? Yes"). Notably, the host, who admitted he'd expected management to be done raising, came around to defending it: "raising the extra billion dollars makes my investment safer… I do not want to have the company go into a capital market death spiral." He said the company will likely put down about $500 million on Falcon 9 launches, and framed the raise as buying insurance before markets get harder ("you are not going to have the ability to issue capital in August because August basically shuts down").

The read-between-the-lines items. He quoted the company's own Reg FD disclosure that ASTS is "in advanced discussions with Rakuten… regarding the preliminary selection of RAST, Rakuten AST… for the JLEO project expected to be roughly $1 billion," meaning the long-rumored Japan constellation deal is now referenced in an official filing, not just fan speculation. Guidance for 45 satellites slipped to "early 2027," and he flagged a "strong insinuation" that ASTS will invest in a launch company (his speculation ran to Relativity or Blue Origin, unconfirmed). He also repeated the claim that ASTS supporters have "figured out" Verizon and T-Mobile relationships from FCC filings, with T-Mobile "not announced yet," again, this is a promotional host's mosaic, not a company statement.

Why it moves numbers: Two things are real and matter: a fresh $1 billion of runway (with the dilution that implies), and a ~$1 billion Japan deal now surfacing in a filing. Everything else from this source should be verified against ASTS's actual disclosures before it goes in a model. The tell worth remembering: even the most bullish voice on ASTS admitted the one variable moving against the thesis is launch cost, "Launch costs over time is likely to normalize… It's just a question of how long."

4. "Unlucky 7": Starship Can't Get Off the Pad

The launch-cadence story took a hit. On This Week in Space (July 18), hosts Rod Pyle (Bad Astronomy Magazine) and Tariq Malik (Space.com) (both Pundit/journalists) recapped the aborted Starship Flight 13, the second flight of the new V3 vehicle. It got to T-minus-zero and stopped: per Musk, a few of the 33 first-stage Raptor engines failed to ignite, triggering an automatic abort. Because the water-suppression system had fired, they had to scrub for the day, and, critically, Musk said they'll remove and replace at least two Raptors, "which is not a one-day turnaround fix," pushing the next attempt to "no earlier than next week." The flight was also set to carry the first ~20 larger V3 Starlink satellites, so the delay pushes back that hardware milestone too.

Why it moves numbers: Starship is the backbone of SpaceX's cost story (cheaper launch means cheaper Starlink capacity) and, downstream, of the whole sector's "launch is getting cheap" assumption. Another visible stumble the same week the stock is cratering makes it harder to argue the launch-cost curve bails out the pre-revenue names on schedule.

5. SpaceX Goes to War: 21 Defense Satellites, and a Supplier List Worth Knowing

The clearest defense-demand signal came from the same This Week in Space episode. SpaceX "just launched out of Vandenberg 21 military data transport satellites" operated by the Space Force's Space Development Agency (SDA), designed to "deliver persistent regional encrypted connectivity in support of warfighter missions." The plan is to build to 126 of them; the hosts said 63 are already in orbit across three Falcon 9 launches, and, the part equity investors should note, the hardened satellites themselves are built by York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin (LMT), and Northrop Grumman (NOC), not SpaceX. It's all part of the SDA's "proliferated warfighter space architecture," a laser-linked mega-constellation refreshed in two-year "tranches." The macro backdrop: the FY2027 Space Force budget request is $71 billion, which the hosts noted is "almost triple NASA's."

Why it moves numbers: This is the quieter, more durable leg of the space-comms story. While the market fixates on SpaceX's float, government money keeps flowing to a defined supplier set: SpaceX for launch, and LMT/NOC/York for the birds. For a book, the defense angle is the one part of this sector where the revenue is real, funded, and recurring.

The Debate: How Big Is the Direct-to-Device Prize, Really?

This is the question every name in the universe ultimately trades on. Here's the honest steel-man of both sides, using this week's evidence.

The bull case (the TAM is enormous):

  • Carriers are publicly admitting they need satellite to close coverage gaps, and, via Stankey, that it could let them retire costly rural infrastructure. That's a cost-savings and revenue argument straight from a carrier CEO, not a vendor pitch.
  • The technology is improving faster than modeled: the ASTS camp's claim of ~3x spectral efficiency, if it holds up in filings, means far more sellable capacity per satellite and a falling cost per bit.
  • Sovereignty demand is a second, non-obvious market. The Japan JLEO deal (~$1 billion) and interest from the EU and South Korea suggest governments will pay for constellations they control rather than depend entirely on Starlink, and a shared, multi-client operator like ASTS is structurally set up to serve them.
  • Defense is a funded overlay on top of the commercial story, with a $71 billion Space Force budget behind it.

The bear case (the prize is thinner and gets commoditized):

  • The carriers drew a hard line: satellite is "complementary," and they "don't want to do any deals that would offer SpaceX access to the market as a peer." A gap-filler you buy at wholesale, on the carrier's terms, is a very different (and lower-margin) business than a new consumer franchise.
  • Starlink Direct-to-Cell plus a T-Mobile relationship may already cover much of the addressable "dead-zone" demand, leaving less room for everyone else.
  • The pre-revenue names are funding this land-grab with dilution (ASTS just did another $1 billion convert), and even their loudest supporters concede launch cost is the one input moving the wrong way.
  • SpaceX's own public-market repricing is the cautionary tale: when a space-TAM story finally meets daily marks and a share-supply reality, the multiple can compress violently. As bearish blogger Chris Irons put it on The Julia La Roche Show (July 23) (Investor, bear), asking a ~$2 trillion valuation for a company "at a hundred times sales multiple" that "isn't really generating any meaningful cash" felt like "a jumping the shark moment… like asking to borrow $1,000, getting turned down, and then turning around and asking to borrow a million instead."

Where this leaves us: The bull and bear are arguing about margin structure, not whether satellites will fill coverage gaps; everyone agrees they will. The real fight is whether the operators capture premium, franchise-like economics, or whether the carriers turn D2D into a low-margin wholesale utility they control. This week's carrier commentary leaned toward the bear's structure; the sovereignty and defense demand lean toward the bull's size. Both can be true at once, which is exactly why these names are so volatile.

Stocks in Play

Every ticker that got airtime this week.

SpaceX / Starlink (private, ticker SPCX)

  • Bull: A 32%-short book plus a first earnings report is a squeeze waiting for a spark; Musk is publicly daring the shorts; the defense and Starlink businesses are real and growing.
  • Bear: No valuation floor, an avalanche of unlocking supply (float heading from ~3% toward 40% by December), a launch program that just stumbled again, and multiple credible voices arguing fair value is far below the current print; Josh Brown expects a sub-$100 handle; Chris Irons argues it's dramatically overvalued.
  • Next catalyst: August 4 earnings, then the August 6 first lockup wave. The most important two days in the sector this quarter.

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS)

  • Bull: BlueBird 10 composite deploy checks a key technical box; claimed ~3x spectral efficiency; a ~$1 billion Japan (JLEO) deal now referenced in a filing; fresh $1 billion of runway; sovereignty and defense optionality.
  • Bear: Serial dilution (another $1 billion convert, stock briefly to $56); 45-satellite target slipped to early 2027; carriers signaling wholesale-not-peer economics; launch cost the one input moving against them; almost all the granular color comes from a promotional source that needs verification.
  • Next catalyst: Batch-two deployments and formal confirmation of the Japan/Rakuten deal and any Verizon/T-Mobile terms in official disclosures, not fan mosaics.

Verizon (VZ) / AT&T (T) / T-Mobile (TMUS)

  • Bull: Satellite lets them fill dead zones cheaply and potentially retire expensive rural gear (Stankey); AT&T beat on subs and raised its buyback to $10 billion; carriers hold the leverage, no peer access for SpaceX.
  • Bear: Their stocks "have taken a pretty substantial hit" on fear that SpaceX enters as a competitor; if Starlink ever gets consumer traction, the gap-filler narrative flips to a share-loss narrative.
  • Next catalyst: Stankey's promised "by this time next year" satellite solution; any formal carrier-operator wholesale terms.

Rocket Lab (RKLB): quiet week on Rocket Lab. No dedicated podcast coverage this window; last month's ~$8 billion Iridium acquisition and the Neutron tank-crack chatter did not resurface on the podcasts. Watch for deal-close progress and Neutron's first launch as the next real catalysts.

Iridium (IRDM): quiet week on Iridium. No standalone coverage; the story remains the pending Rocket Lab takeout.

Globalstar (GSAT): quiet week on Globalstar. Zero dedicated episodes across two targeted searches, and even the recurring "Amazon buys Globalstar" rumor didn't resurface this week. Genuinely silent.

EchoStar / Hughes (SATS): quiet week on EchoStar. No coverage.

Lockheed Martin (LMT) / Northrop Grumman (NOC) / York Space Systems (private): surfaced as the builders of the SDA's 21-satellite defense batch. The funded, recurring, unglamorous side of the trade.

Read-throughs

  • Carrier partners (VZ, T, TMUS): The week's biggest read-through. A carrier CEO on the record calling satellite "complementary," useful for retiring costly network gear, but explicitly not something they'll give SpaceX peer access to. Bullish for coverage economics, bearish for the idea that operators capture premium franchise value.
  • Incumbents (IRDM, SATS): Silent on the podcasts, but Iridium's fate is tied to the Rocket Lab deal, and EchoStar remains a spectrum-and-equity read-through to SpaceX rather than a standalone story.
  • Launch & component suppliers: Named this week, York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman on the SDA defense birds; Falcon 9 as ASTS's chosen ride (~$500 million of commitments) and the SDA launcher; a hinted ASTS investment in an unnamed launch company (Relativity/Blue Origin floated as speculation). Starship's stumble is a mild negative for the "launch keeps getting cheaper" assumption underpinning everyone's models.
  • SpaceX private-market valuation as sentiment anchor: For the first time, this anchor is a public mark, and it's dragging. VC Rick Heitzmann noted on RiskReversal Pod (July 23) (Investor) that SpaceX's raise took in a staggering share of all 2026 IPO proceeds; Money Stuff's Matt Levine and Katie Greifeld (Pundit) (July 17) flagged that index-inclusion demand has already passed and that the lockups will release more shares than the IPO sold. When the sector's reference asset is falling and about to be flooded with supply, sentiment for ASTS and RKLB inherits the downdraft.

What Changed vs Last Week

Last week's issue led with the Street initiating SpaceX after its Nasdaq 100 debut, 18 of 19 analysts raising price targets, a median around $225, and bulls floating $800-plus. One week later, reality has moved hard in the other direction:

  • SpaceX has round-tripped below its IPO price. The $225 median target now looks like a peak marker; the stock is in the low $120s, down roughly a quarter just since its index debut. The lockup we flagged as an open item now has a hard date, August 6, two days after the August 4 earnings, and short interest has surged to ~32%.
  • ASTS raised another $1 billion. Last week's ASTS notes were about spectrum, India, and Japan chatter; this week the news is a fresh convertible bond (dilution), a composite BlueBird deployment, and the Japan JLEO deal graduating from rumor into a Reg FD reference. The 45-satellite target also slipped to early 2027.
  • The carriers spoke. Last week we had "no new deal terms" from VZ/T/TMUS. This week AT&T's CEO gave the clearest carrier framing yet, satellite as a complementary gap-filler, no peer access for SpaceX.
  • Rocket Lab / Iridium and Neutron went quiet. After two weeks of heavy deal and tank-crack chatter, the podcasts had nothing new on either name. Not a contradiction, just silence. Worth watching whether that's a genuine lull or simply a gap in podcast coverage of a deal that's still very much live.
  • Still quiet, as before: Globalstar, EchoStar, and Apple/Globalstar SOS. Three straight weeks of near-silence on GSAT.

The through-line: a month ago the market was pricing space TAM on hope. This week it started pricing it on supply, cash burn, and daily marks. That repricing is the story to watch into August.