SpaceX's first public quarter down 12% — and Musk cuts the Starship forecast
From the Space digest for 2026-10-01
SPCX ended its first full quarter as a public company down 12% (closed Wednesday $150.86, +1.1%; −6% YTD). Cut, in Musk's own words: from "at least one flight a day" by a year from now (Aug 4 earnings call) to "Next year, we expect Starship to reach a weekly or twice weekly launch cadence" (this week, beside Jensen Huang). Jim Chanos: Mach33's 50–100 annualized read on the new target midpoint (75) is an "80% cut in forecasted 2027 Starship launches"; Tim Farrar thinks even weekly-by-2027 is "at best an end of 2027 objective" and expects further downgrades. The Street stays loyal — Needham: Buy, $250 target (66% upside) modeling $54B annualized from announced AI-compute deals (most ramping Q4, one beginning December) toward the ledgered $100B-ARR-by-year-end.
What's genuinely new: the forecast cut is now on the record (ledgered with the original claim's date intact), and Chanos is out in front of the short case while F14's just-done milestone — orbit reached, 26 operational V3s deployed, ship splashdown earlier than planned — gets re-marked as "ended earlier than planned."
Links: Yahoo/StockTwits · IBD