SpaceX shares fell about 2.5% to $115.26 on Friday morning, pressured by a second delay to the company’s 13th Starship test flight and a Hold rating from HSBC analyst Nicolas Cote-Colisson, who began coverage with a $115 price target.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which trades under the ticker SPCX, is now down nearly 50% from its all-time high of $225.64 and 12% below its June IPO price of $135.

The latest Starship flight test has been postponed twice. SpaceX aborted the first attempt on July 17 after several Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed to ignite. A second attempt on July 23 was called off because weather conditions limited visibility of the spacecraft’s heat shield.

Since then, SpaceX has replaced multiple Raptor engines and completed further ground testing. Another launch attempt was scheduled for Friday evening, with coverage available at spacex.com and on X.

For the test, the booster’s main objectives include liftoff, stage separation, a boostback burn, and a landing burn at an offshore point in the Gulf of America. The upper stage is expected to attempt deployment of 20 Starlink V3 satellites and test an in-space engine relight before splashing down in the Indian Ocean. Those milestones make the flight a closely watched operational test because it combines booster performance, upper-stage operations, and Starlink deployment objectives in a single mission profile.

HSBC Takes a More Cautious View

HSBC’s Hold rating stands apart from the broader analyst consensus. As of Friday, 28 of 37 analysts, or about 76%, rated SpaceX a Buy. The average price target was around $237 per share. By comparison, the typical Buy-rating ratio for S&P 500 stocks is generally between 55% and 60%.

Cote-Colisson said SpaceX is impressive but advised investors to be “prudent.” He also warned that additional selling pressure could emerge as lockup periods for early investors expire following the company’s June IPO. Lockup expirations are a common post-IPO focus because they can increase the amount of stock available for sale, even when they do not necessarily indicate a change in a company’s underlying operations.

SpaceX’s Aug. 4 earnings report is the next major scheduled event for the stock. According to the analyst, the company will need to demonstrate clear growth in its Starlink business to support a move higher in the share price. Starlink remains a key part of the company’s public-market narrative because the satellite network is directly tied to both launch cadence and the deployment capacity SpaceX is testing with Starship.

Short Sellers Build Large Paper Gains

Short sellers have accumulated an estimated $15.5 billion in paper profits since SpaceX’s IPO. Around 360 million SpaceX shares, equal to roughly 56% of freely tradable stock, are reportedly on loan to short sellers.

After posting two consecutive gains of more than 19% in the days following the IPO, SpaceX shares have declined in 17 of the past 26 trading sessions. That stretch included a seven-day losing streak that ended Tuesday, followed by a 6.7% drop on Wednesday.

Alphabet also disclosed a large SpaceX position this week, valuing its holdings at approximately $94.1 billion as of the end of June. The subsequent decline in SpaceX’s share price has reduced the current market value of that stake.

Separately, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 program has continued at a steadier pace. The company launched 24 Starlink satellites from California on July 21, one day after a rare last-second abort.