Investing.com -- Susquehanna Financial Group initiated coverage of Elon Musk’s SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) with a Neutral rating and a $170 price target, saying the rocket and satellite giant has a strong competitive position, but its current valuation is too stretched to warrant buying the stock.

Analyst Charles Minervino laid out a broadly positive view of the business, citing SpaceX’s dominance in rocket launch, the growth runway at its Starlink satellite connectivity unit, and a nascent artificial intelligence segment built around the company’s xAI acquisition earlier this year.

He forecast revenue growing at a 56% compound annual rate from 2025 to 2030, reaching $173 billion, with EBITDA climbing from $6.6 billion to $74.9 billion over the same period.

Still, Minervino stopped short of rating the stock at Buy. "We believe the current valuation requires premium multiples on very aggressive revenue and EBITDA growth assumptions," he wrote, adding that with some of SpaceX’s markets still relatively unproven, "we believe a wide range of outcomes exist."

“This introduces quite a bit of risk into future expectations and therefore would recommend waiting for a better entry point on the stock,” the analyst said.

The $170 price target was derived from a sum-of-parts analysis valuing SpaceX’s Space segment at 40 times 2028 EV/Sales, its Connectivity segment at 45 times 2028 EV/EBITDA, and its AI segment at 9 times 2028 EV/Sales — all significant premiums to peers.

Susquehanna identified several catalysts that could move the stock in either direction. Successful development of Starship, the company’s next-generation fully reusable rocket, is central to the long-term case, as the vehicle underpins both Starlink’s next generation of satellites and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions.

On the risk side, Minervino flagged potential delays in Starship, competitive pressure on Starlink pricing from Amazon’s planned satellite constellation, and concentration risk in the AI segment, where compute leasing contracts with Anthropic and Google together represent annualized revenue of roughly $26 billion but can be terminated by either party after initial trial periods.