HAWTHORNE, Calif. — SpaceX has picked up its first piece of Wall Street coverage since going public, and it comes from one of the market's best-known tech bulls. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives initiated coverage of SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) on Wednesday with an "Outperform" rating and a $190 price target.
Ives — long among the most vocal bulls on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) — framed SpaceX as a rare, category-defining franchise. "We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market," he wrote, citing a strong footprint across Starlink connectivity, Starship launches and the company's Colossus AI-compute clusters.
A $2.48 Trillion Thesis
The $190 target is anchored to a valuation that sees SpaceX generating roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value. Ives leaned heavily on Starlink as the profitability engine, describing a recurring-revenue base of about 12 million subscribers as of early June and arguing the service is still in the "early innings," holding less than 1% of the global telecom and broadband market. The initiation lands just as index mechanics turn in the stock's favor, with SpaceX set to join the Nasdaq-100 on July 7 and trigger billions in passive buying.
Ives also flagged Starship as an "essential layer" of the story, noting that reusability lowers hardware costs while creating a feedback loop that lifts flight rate without ballooning capital spending.
Room Above the Target
Interestingly, Wedbush's math leaves upside on the table. The firm said it did not factor in "optional value" from Starship's march toward sub-$200-per-kilogram economics, orbital data centers, or enterprise AI monetization — each a potential needle-mover that the analyst set aside because of execution hurdles. In other words, the $190 target is built on the base business, not the moonshots. That conservative framing stands out against a Street that has been sharply divided on where SPCX belongs, with published targets ranging widely.
Where the Stock Stands
SPCX traded near $167 on Wednesday, off about 2% on the session even as the bullish note circulated — a reminder that a freshly public, heavily scrutinized name can stay choppy. Investors can follow live quotes on Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, WSJ and Nasdaq. Ives' full note was detailed by Teslarati, which noted the analyst also expects $SPCX and $TSLA could eventually merge into a single Musk-led entity.
The Bigger Picture
For a company that only recently completed the largest IPO in history, drawing a marquee bull with a trillion-dollar-scale thesis is a notable early vote of confidence. With Nasdaq-100 inclusion days away, Starlink subscribers climbing and Starship maturing, SpaceX enters its life as a public company with one of the most expansive growth stories on the market — and, by Wedbush's own admission, plenty of upside its models have not yet counted.
This article does not constitute financial advice. Readers are advised to do their own research before investing in the stock market. Prices cited are point-in-time snapshots and may be stale — always confirm on a live financial source.
