What to Expect From SpaceX’s First Public Earnings Report

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Katie Deighton** (0:10)
Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, August 4th. I'm Katie Deighton for the Wall Street Journal. Elon Musk's SpaceX reports its first results as a public company today, against a backdrop of a post IPO stock plunge and missed Tesla earnings. We'll be setting the complete scene ahead of the most anticipated earnings call of the year so far.
Then we're asking, how much do you miss real buttons in your car? For some drivers, the answer is so much that they're taking extreme measures to avoid new technology in their vehicles.
But first, SpaceX is set to announce its quarterly results this afternoon, the first time it's reported since going public in June. All eyes will be on Musk, who was named the world's first trillionaire after SpaceX pulled off the largest IPO of all time. But the outlook hasn't remained so sunny since then. WSJ reporter Becky Peterson joins us now to discuss what she'll be looking out for as SpaceX reports after the bell. This has got to be one of the most anticipated, speculated over earnings reports of 2026 Why will so many people be tuning into SpaceX's results after the bell today?

**Becky Peterson** (1:24)
So SpaceX had its big IPO in June and it brought in a lot of new retail investors, everyday people who were excited to follow Elon on his journey.
Today, SpaceX executives will be talking to those investors for the first time. We don't know yet exactly who will be on the call, but I would expect to hear from Elon Musk himself, maybe Gwen Shotwell, who's the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, and possibly also the CFO.

**Katie Deighton** (1:54)
And you mentioned the IPO. Obviously, since then, the stock price has dropped quite substantially.
Given this big swings, is there a consensus over what we might expect to hear in terms of the results later today? Or is it pretty much anybody's guess right now?

**Becky Peterson** (2:11)
As of Monday, SpaceX had lost over $1 trillion from the peak of where it was trading after the IPO. It's more than half of its value if you just look at the share price. But in the world of Musk, these stocks often trade on vibes and SpaceX is no different. So before the IPO, we got the giant S1, which really outlined for the first time all of SpaceX business, what it was bringing in revenue wise from its rockets, its satellite internet and its new AI business, which is what a lot of the value is hinging on.
They have brought in a few new customers since the S1. They just announced this big new rocket contract with the government. They are adding new customers to the AI data center business. So it is possible that we'll see bumps, but it hasn't been that long though. So we'll probably see just the incremental growth of a company that's reporting quarterly earnings rather than the big surprise of the first revelation in 20 years, which is what the S1 was.

**Katie Deighton** (3:17)
And you mentioned these three parts of the business, which is AI, which includes the X platform, space and Starlink connectivity business. Which parts of the business do you anticipate analysts will be zooming in on the closest?

**Becky Peterson** (3:32)
When SpaceX was a private company, investors were obsessed with its Starlink internet business. And that's because it was adding new subscribers at a really rapid clip. In the first quarter of 2026, they doubled their subscribers to Starlink compared to the same period last year. So that's a really high growth part of the SpaceX business. And that's what gave it its big valuation on the private markets before it merged with XAI.
Now, though, they have XAI and they're saying AI is the future of the business. So like other public companies, Google and Tesla, they're going to be spending a lot of money on expansion into AI. And if those other companies' earnings are any indication, there's probably going to be some interest in how much money exactly is SpaceX spending and what's their free cash flow.

**Katie Deighton** (4:25)
There have always been rumors and ideas around a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX. What's kind of the status on that right now from reporting you've done recently?

**Becky Peterson** (4:37)
Nothing official has happened. And before it does, I'm sure there will be a lot of public messaging because any merger between SpaceX and Tesla would have to be approved by the Tesla board and Tesla shareholders.
But Musk hasn't shooed away the rumor either. On the Tesla earnings call in July, he talked about all the ways that the companies work together and could work together.