Susquehanna Puts the First Price on SPCX: Neutral, $170, 'Wait for a Better Entry'

The First Number Wall Street Will Print

On June 23, Susquehanna's Charles Minervino became the first sell-side analyst to initiate coverage on the newly public SpaceX, starting SPCX at Neutral with a $170 price target. That target sits only about 6.5% above the ~$159.40 where shares trade, and the framing is unusually blunt for a debut call: clients should wait for a better entry point. Eleven days after the record $86B IPO that closed its first session at $161, the stock finally has a fundamental anchor — and it lands almost exactly on top of the current price.

What $170 Actually Assumes

Minervino is not bearish on the company. His model has revenue compounding at 56% a year to $173 billion by 2030, with EBITDA climbing from $6.6 billion to $74.9 billion over the same stretch. The Neutral rests on valuation, not doubt about the business: his sum-of-parts applies premium 2028 multiples — 40x EV/Sales on the launch franchise, 45x EV/EBITDA on Starlink connectivity, and 9x EV/Sales on the xAI-built AI segment — and *still* only arrives at $170. In other words, even crediting SpaceX with aggressive growth across all three legs, the stock is roughly fairly valued right here. The risks he flags are concrete: Starship slippage, Amazon's Kuiper constellation pressuring Starlink pricing, and AI-segment concentration, where the Anthropic and Google compute contracts worth roughly $26 billion in annualized revenue can be terminated by either party.

Why It Matters After the Bond Panic

The initiation lands into a stock still digesting a violent week. SPCX is down roughly 30% from its June 16 high near $225.64, including a 16.4% single-day drop on June 22 when the company launched a $20 billion investment-grade bond sale and disclosed $100.8 billion in cash. With only about 4% of shares freely floating, price discovery has run on momentum and positioning rather than fundamentals. A sell-side target — even a tepid one — hands the desk a reference point it simply did not have a day ago. The signal for perps traders: the first independent fair-value estimate sits right at spot, which caps the 'it's cheap' case on the long side, while the $225 print still hangs overhead as the bulls' anchor.