SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) stock is down 6% to $131.86 midday Thursday, slipping below the company’s $135 IPO price for the first time since the June debut. Roughly 319 million shares came off lockup this morning, the latest tranche in a staggered release schedule that will eventually free most of the float. A move under the offering price gives sellers a clear reference to trade against as more supply becomes eligible.
At the same time, Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) stock is down 4% to $72.67 with no company-specific supply event, drifting lower alongside the broader space complex. Procure Space ETF (NYSEARCA:UFO) shares are down 2% to $45.54 but remain up 17% year to date (YTD), framing how much of the sector has worked this year outside of SpaceX.
Same Unlock Event, Opposite Reaction
The revealing detail sits in the comparison to earlier this month. On August 6, up to 911.5 million SpaceX shares became eligible to trade, a far larger tranche, and SpaceX stock absorbed the supply and rose 6% that day. Today’s release is a fraction of that size, yet it has driven shares back under the IPO reference.
Behind the schedule sits a staggered lockup that will free 88% of the company’s 13 billion shares through 2027. SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s 6.42 billion shares remain locked until June 2027, so today’s tranche does not touch insider control. That leaves the immediate supply picture as the driver of the reaction.
What has shifted between August 6 and today looks less like anything at the company and more like the market’s willingness to absorb SpaceX paper at these levels. With a $1.02 trillion market cap, the company can absorb today’s reaction inside a very large float, and the move looks like an adjustment rather than a repricing of the business.
Rocket Lab Falls While Supply Weighs on SPCX
Rocket Lab has no unlock catalyst today. This isolates supply as the reason SpaceX stock is falling harder than RKLB stock.
The Procure Space ETF captures the broader space economy across satellite communications, launch services, space infrastructure, aerospace and defense, and Earth observation. A narrow thematic fund concentrates exposure in a relatively small group of names, so a single large mover can swing the basket in either direction. That concentration risk is worth accounting for when using UFO to shape sector exposure.
SpaceX operates across three segments: Space, which covers launch services and spacecraft; Connectivity, which includes Starlink and Starshield; and AI, which houses cloud compute, the Grok models, and the X platform. None of those operating pieces changed this morning. Only the number of shares eligible to trade did, and that mechanical change is doing all of the work in today’s tape.
What Comes Next on the Supply Calendar
The largest tranches still sit ahead. A roughly 1.3 billion-share release aligns with SpaceX’s third quarter earnings in early November, followed by the 180-day lockup expiry in December that opens another meaningful chunk of the float. Both dwarf today’s 319 million shares.
Traders may want to watch for whether SPCX stock stabilizes above the $135 IPO reference over the coming sessions, or whether today’s break invites more selling as the November window approaches. With two larger unlocks scheduled between now and year-end, cautious position sizing should treat supply pressure as a scheduled feature of this name rather than a surprise.
Today’s divergence between the two space names is mechanical. Rocket Lab trades on sentiment while SpaceX trades on supply, and the calendar suggests that supply story has further chapters to play out.
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