Global Capital

First public earnings beat expectations; the lock-up that was supposed to crash the stock triggers a short squeeze instead

2026-08-15 · part of Musk Megacap

What happened

SpaceX (SPCX) reported its first-ever quarterly earnings as a public company: $7.81B revenue (+92% YoY, beating the ~$6.81B estimate), Starlink subscribers doubled to 12M, adjusted EBITDA up 191% to $3.5B, and net loss narrowed to $541M from $1.01B a year earlier. The first real test of what the public market pays for the SpaceX story once actual financials, not just the IPO print, were on the table. (Yahoo Finance)
SPCX closed above its $135 IPO price for the first time in weeks on 08-10, up roughly 35% since 08-05 — the 911.5M-share lock-up expiration on 08-06 that Wall Street expected to crash the stock instead triggered a short squeeze. Reverses this thread's own 07-30 entry (stock ~15% under issue, short interest ~35% of float) within a two-week window — the "does the public market believe this story" question this thread exists to track swung hard in one direction, then the other. (CNBC, 24/7 Wall St.)

Sources 3

Yahoo Finance finance.yahoo.com mixed 0.517
CNBC cnbc.com high 0.85
24/7 Wall St. 247wallst.com high 0.871

Credibility ratings combine two public datasets: Lin et al. 2023, PNAS Nexus 2(9):pgad286 (CC BY 4.0) for the domain-quality score, and Wikipedia's perennial-sources list (CC BY-SA 4.0) for the reliability tier. A rating describes an outlet's general record, never this particular article. Unrated means absent from those datasets — not a judgement.

The wider story

This event sits inside Musk Megacap, which carries how it developed before and since.

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Adjacent threads (shared entities):

· Colossus

· Grok

· Grok Harm

· Where the Capex Lands

· Power Buildout

· Datacenter Sites

· Grid & Turbines