Analysis
SpaceX shares climbed back to near their $135 IPO price on August 10, according to CNBC, recovering from a stretch earlier this month when the stock traded below its offering price for the first time since going public. Pulse tracked that slide as it happened: shares had fallen from a post-IPO high above $225 down toward $108, pressured in part by the first major lockup expiration on August 6, which freed roughly 911.5 million shares worth as much as $116 billion for potential sale and more than doubled the stock's public float.
What's changed since then: the stock has recovered roughly the full distance back to its IPO price in a matter of days, suggesting the lockup-driven selling pressure was either smaller in practice than the freed-share total implied, or was absorbed by buyers without moving the price further down. SpaceX also beat expectations in its first earnings report as a public company, which Pulse covered separately, giving the stock a fundamental catalyst independent of the lockup dynamics.
A round-trip back to the IPO price after a lockup-driven dip and a subsequent earnings beat is a meaningfully different story than either the dip or the beat in isolation would suggest. It indicates the market's read on the lockup was a supply-and-demand event rather than a signal about SpaceX's underlying value -- once the initial selling pressure cleared, the stock found its way back to roughly where it started. That said, $135 is still well below the stock's post-IPO peak above $225, and a rebound to the offering price is recovery, not a return to the euphoria that greeted SpaceX's record-breaking $85.7 billion IPO.
