Raymond James slaps Street-high $800 target on SpaceX, implying 440% upside

Investing.com - Raymond James analyst Brian Gesuale initiated coverage of SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) on July 7 with a Strong Buy rating and a $800 price target, the highest on Wall Street, implying roughly 440% upside from the stock's July 8 close of $148.30. The call arrives as SPCX trades below its IPO debut opening price, underscoring the gulf between the most aggressive bulls and a market still calibrating what the world's most valuable aerospace company is worth.

Investors seeking leveraged exposure to the SpaceX story have two ETF proxies to watch: the Leverage Shares 2X Long SPCX Daily ETF (NASDAQ: SPCH) and the Defiance Daily Target 2X Long SPCX ETF (NASDAQ: SPCU), both of which amplify daily moves in the underlying and were each indicated higher in pre-market trading ahead of Thursday's open.

Gesuale's initiation note, reported by StreetInsider and AOL/Yahoo Finance, frames SpaceX not as a rocket company but as a generational infrastructure platform. "Starship represents the defining industrial innovation of our generation," he wrote, positioning the firm alongside the railroads and internet backbones of prior eras. At $800 per share, the implied market capitalization would approach $10 trillion, roughly six times the current valuation and more than three times that of Microsoft at the consensus price target of $240. That average target, compiled by Reuters, would itself value SpaceX at approximately $3.2 trillion.

Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu struck a similarly expansive tone in a separate initiation, describing SpaceX as "the apex of civilizational ambition, oftentimes expressed in steel and fire, bending the arc of history to make humans multiplanetary by building foundational infrastructure across transportation, connectivity, and AI." Yu's note was reported by AOL/Yahoo Finance.

The enthusiasm is nearly universal among the analysts who have initiated coverage. At least 13 analysts have now weighed in, and all 12 from the IPO's underwriting banks carry the equivalent of a Buy rating, according to AOL/Yahoo Finance. That unanimity has drawn scrutiny: those same banks stand to benefit from future SpaceX capital raises that Goldman Sachs has estimated at up to $270 billion through 2030, creating a potential conflict of interest that market observers have flagged.

MoffettNathanson is the lone outright skeptic among initiating analysts, carrying a neutral rating with a $131 price target that implies roughly 18% downside from recent levels, per CNBC. CFRA has reportedly issued a sell-equivalent rating with a $115 Street-low target, though the detailed rationale for that bear case has not been widely circulated.

The stock's price action has been a puzzle for bulls. SPCX raised $85.7 billion in its June 12, 2026 IPO, the largest in history, pricing at $135 and opening at $150. It joined the Nasdaq-100 on July 7 in one of the fastest such inclusions on record under revised Nasdaq listing rules, a move J.P. Morgan estimated would trigger $4.3 billion in passive inflows as funds benchmarked to the index rebalanced, Reuters reported. Yet by July 8 the stock had slid back to $148.30, closing below that debut opening level despite the index tailwind and the flood of bullish coverage. Pre-market data as of early Thursday pointed to $150.30, a gain of about 1.35%, suggesting SPCX may reclaim the $150 threshold ahead of the open.

"There's nervousness about expectations being too high," Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, told Reuters. "I expect that to continue until we get some earnings out."

That tension sits at the heart of the SpaceX valuation debate. The company carries no listed P/E ratio, and with no earnings history as a public company, there is no conventional anchor for the bulls' projections. Gesuale's $800 target rests on Starship's disruptive potential across launch economics, Starlink's satellite broadband ambitions, and what Raymond James characterizes as a once-in-a-century infrastructure buildout. Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owens has characterized some peer valuations in this cohort as "a bit fantastical," per Reuters, though a fuller written rationale has not been detailed in available sources.

What investors will be watching most closely are two catalysts that don't yet have firm dates. The first is SpaceX's maiden quarterly earnings release as a public company, which could either validate or puncture the forecasts underpinning targets like Raymond James's. The second is the insider lock-up expiration for early investors and Elon Musk's inner circle, a date that has not been specified in publicly available sources but that will ultimately determine how much supply enters the market. Until both arrive, the $800 call from Raymond James will remain the most striking benchmark in a coverage universe that is still, in almost every sense, just getting started.

You May Also Be Interested In

• FDA Committee Recommends To Widen Access To Bpc-157 Peptide
• Google Says It Holds $94 Billion In Spacex Shares After IPO
• Mattel and WWE to launch Lucha Libre AAA action figures in 2027