SpaceX stock prediction starts from a close that cannot contain Saturday’s catch. Space Exploration Technologies (Nasdaq: SPCX) finished Friday 13 November 2026 at $139.11, down $0.83, or 0.59 percent, from Thursday’s $139.94, in the Nasdaq historical file. On Saturday the Starbase tower caught Starship’s upper stage for the first time, after 22.5 hours and a full set of 26 Starlink V3 satellites. Having tracked SPCX since the 12 June listing, the split I keep coming back to is this: the flight is a reuse milestone, and the equity is still priced off a company whose rocket segment was about 12 percent of last quarter’s sales and lost money at the operating line.
The house path through Thursday 31 December 2026, 32 sessions on the last 90 daily log-returns, puts a bull at $195.85, a base at $134.74 and a bear at $105.01. The base sits $4.37 under Friday’s close because the mean of those returns is negative. Analyst price targets are not an input. Monday 16 November is the first cash session that can contain the catch.
Key facts
- Friday 13 November Nasdaq close: $139.11, down $0.83, or 0.59 percent, from $139.94. Range $136.64 to $142.24. Volume 78,515,460 shares. Source: Nasdaq historical file, fetched 15 November 2026.
- Catch: Ship 42 returned to the same Starbase pad 22.5 hours after liftoff and the tower arms closed on it. Source: SpaceX Flight 15 page.
- Payload: 26 Starlink V3 satellites, with contact made on every one. Source: the same SpaceX page.
- Booster 22: boostback ended early on low fuel mass, root cause still under investigation, then an automated offshore divert and a flight-termination trigger. Source: SpaceX, and Kate Tice and Dan Huot on the webcast, via Space.com.
- House path from the $139.11 close, 32 sessions through 31 December: bull $195.85, base $134.74, bear $105.01. Mean log-return minus 0.0009963068. Sample standard deviation 0.0440729981.
- Third quarter, ended 30 September: revenue $14.58 billion, up 161 percent, net income $4.40 billion, Space segment revenue $1.77 billion and a $7 million operating loss. Source: FinanceFeeds on the Exhibit 99.1 shareholder letter.
- Nine-month capital spending $48.07 billion against $13.10 billion of cash from operations. Source: the same FinanceFeeds account of the letter.
What the tower caught
Flight 15 left Pad 2 at Starbase on Friday 13 November with 33 Raptor engines on Super Heavy. Hot-staging handed the ship six Raptors of its own. The ship made orbit on a single-engine insertion burn, released all 26 Starlink V3 satellites, and coasted for more than 20 hours. SpaceX says contact was made with every satellite and that they were already raising their orbits into the Starlink shell.
The return used a single sea-level Raptor for the deorbit burn, then three Raptors for the landing flip. On the company’s own timeline the landing burn starts at 22 hours, 32 minutes and 16 seconds, the flip follows at 22:32:18, the burn steps from three engines to two and then to one, and shutdown and catch are stamped at 22:32:34. Space.com timed the catch at 4:20 p.m. EST, 3:20 p.m. in Texas, about 22.5 hours after liftoff.
Dan Huot, on the landing webcast, put the operational claim in one sentence. “That was the missing link,” he said, in Space.com’s account. “That was the holy grail of spaceflight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel. We caught a Starship, and now everything changes.” SpaceX’s own post on X, sent at 21:21 GMT on Saturday, was shorter: “Mechazilla catches Starship! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on this incredible achievement!” When I checked that post on 15 November it had passed 14.1 million views, with 134,247 likes and 26,243 reposts. The view count will move. The sentence will not.
Elon Musk, quoting a photograph of the descent, wrote on X: “This gives a clear sense of the catch maneuver.” On a separate post the same morning he wrote only “5 years ago,” under a reminder of a 2021 comment about catching a ship. Those are reactions. They are not a revenue guide.
The booster that did not come home
The double catch was the plan. The booster half failed, and the company’s account is specific. Super Heavy relit 32 of the 33 Raptors planned for the boostback burn. The burn ended early because of low fuel mass. The root cause, SpaceX says, is still under investigation. Guidance, navigation and control then triggered an automated abort during the coast and diverted the booster offshore. It flew a landing burn, the engines cut off while it was hovering over the Gulf, and the flight-termination system fired.
Kate Tice, on the Saturday webcast, gave the early read that Space.com recorded: “Early indications are that the booster ended its boostback early due to a low fuel mass alarm. The team is still investigating the root cause on that.” Huot corrected his Friday call in the same coverage. “It was not a GNC issue that caused us not to come back,” he said. “GNC triggered that abort; it was doing what it was supposed to do.” The cause of the bad position is the open item. The abort itself is the safety system working.
Musk’s post on X on Saturday afternoon is the chief executive’s preliminary read. “Slight underperformance of engines on this flight is the reason,” he wrote. “The booster is meant to land with tiny residuals, so the solution is to improve engine performance and performance consistency (underway with Raptor V3.2), as well as adjust flight software to do MECO1 about one second earlier to ensure enough propellant for boostback and landing (tiny change).” He added that these early ships and boosters are already behind designs in production or on the stand, “so this booster loss does not change our timeline to reach high volume, fully reusable Starship flights.” When checked on 15 November that post had about 2.1 million views and 32,225 likes. A one-second software change and a new engine standard are engineering claims. The stock will test them on a later flight, not on a Saturday post.
Monday is the first print that can contain it
Nasdaq’s info endpoint, fetched with the historical file, listed the market as closed and the last sale as $139.11, timestamped 13 November, down $0.83, or 0.59 percent. The file’s Friday row is open $140.172, high $142.24, low $136.6401, close $139.11, volume 78,515,460. The 20-session average volume in that same file is 113.5 million shares, so Friday traded at about 69 percent of its own recent pace.
The 20-day average of closes is $142.10, so Friday finished $2.99, or 2.11 percent, under it. The 50-day average is $148.90, so the close is $9.79, or 6.58 percent, under that line. The first daily close in the file is $160.95 on 12 June, the listing day, against a $135 offer price. Friday is 13.57 percent under that first close and 3.04 percent over the offer. The high print in the file is $225.64 on 16 June, when the close was $201.80. Friday is 38.35 percent under that intraday high and 31.07 percent under that close. The low close is $108.27 on 5 August. The low print is $104.83 on 3 August, which matches the 52-week range the Nasdaq info page prints, $104.83 to $225.64.
The last five sessions, 9 November through 13 November, traded between an intraday low of $135.37 and an intraday high of $147.60. The five sessions before that dipped to $128.57 on 6 November, the day after a $123.62 close. The file has already travelled from $104.83 to $225.64 inside five months. The catch arrives on top of that range. It does not replace it.
The path through 31 December
The sample is the last 90 completed daily log-returns in the Nasdaq file. There are 108 closes from 12 June through 13 November, so 107 returns exist and the oldest 17 are left out. The window opens on the 9 July close and ends on Friday. The mean log-return is minus 0.0009963068. The sample standard deviation, the one statistics.stdev returns, is 0.0440729981. The largest absolute move in the window, 7 August from $114.92 to $133.11, stays in the sample.
From Monday 16 November through Thursday 31 December there are 32 weekday sessions once Thanksgiving, 26 November, and Christmas, 25 December, are removed. The session after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve are early closes, and they still count. The base compounds the mean return across those 32 sessions: $139.11 times e to the power of 32 times the mean, which prints $134.74. The bull adds 1.5 standard deviations times the square root of 32 on top of that drift, and prints $195.85. The bear subtracts one standard deviation times the square root of 32, and prints $105.01. Against Friday’s close that is plus 40.8 percent, minus 3.1 percent, and minus 24.5 percent.
The bear at $105.01 is $3.26 under the lowest close in the file, $108.27 on 5 August, and $0.18 over the lowest print, $104.83 on 3 August. The bull at $195.85 sits under the 16 June close of $201.80. A ten-session check, through Monday 30 November, prints bull $169.76, base $137.73 and bear $119.81. That nearer pair does not collide with a bull already used on an English FinanceFeeds title, and neither does the year-end pair. The title uses 31 December because that is the horizon and the arithmetic cleared the collision test. The ten-session numbers are a marker for anyone who thinks a catch is a one-week trade. They are not the call in the headline.
Where the quarter’s money actually sat
The third-quarter letter is already on the record, and the catch does not rewrite it. FinanceFeeds reported the Exhibit 99.1 figures filed with the 20 October 8-K: revenue $14.58 billion, up 161 percent from $5.58 billion, income from operations $2.79 billion against a $273 million loss a year earlier, net income $4.40 billion against a $1.05 billion loss, and adjusted EBITDA of $8.81 billion, up 306 percent. Super Intelligence, renamed from Artificial Intelligence in that quarter, booked $7.56 billion against $813 million. Connectivity booked $5.25 billion. Space booked $1.77 billion.
Divide $1.77 billion by $14.58 billion and the rocket segment is 12.1 percent of the quarter. The same letter, as reported in that piece, shows Space revenue up 6 percent, customer launches at 12, total launches down to 35 from 44, and a $7 million operating loss. Connectivity income from operations rose 99 percent to $2.37 billion. Starlink consumer subscribers were 13.6 million at 30 September, up 1.6 million in the quarter, with monthly consumer revenue per user at $69 across 174 countries. The segment that pays the operating profit is the one that already has customers on the ground.
Flight 14, on the same letter, was the first Starship mission to reach orbit and the first to carry revenue, and it also delivered 26 Starlink V3 satellites. Flight 15 repeated that satellite count and added the catch. Two missions are not a run-rate, and the letter does not book weekly flights.
Capital spending is the half a catch does not shrink. The quarter’s capital expenditure was $19.59 billion, of which $16.44 billion sat in Super Intelligence. Across nine months the company spent $48.07 billion against $13.10 billion of cash generated by operations. Cash and equivalents were $51.29 billion at 30 September, with a further $38.56 billion of marketable securities. The separate $40 billion GPU financing, closed after the quarter and due in the first half of 2027, funds hardware for that same build. A reusable ship lowers the cost of the next launch. It does not retire a compute bill that already ran ahead of the quarter’s entire revenue.
The millions behind the round numbers are in the FinanceFeeds walk through the 161.4 percent revenue line, from $5,576 million to $14,575 million. The 12 percent share and the dollar loss can be checked against that exhibit rather than against a headline.
What has to be true
The bull at $195.85 is the drift plus a one-and-a-half-sigma move over 32 sessions. For that path to describe the business, the caught ship has to fly again on a turnaround measured in days, Starlink V3 drops have to become a sequence rather than a pair of 26-satellite missions, and the capex gap has to stop widening faster than connectivity cash flow. A 40 percent move on a 12 percent segment is a multiple story.
The base at $134.74 is what the recent drift does if the next 32 sessions look like the last 90. It is $4.37 under Friday and $0.26 under the $135 offer. A catch that the market treats as already implied by Flight 14’s orbit, plus a booster loss that keeps the double-catch claim open, is enough to land there. The negative mean does the work.
The bear at $105.01 is the same drift with one standard deviation against it. The file has already printed a close at $108.27 and a trade at $104.83, so the level is inside the life of the listing. What would take the stock there is a failure to repeat the catch, a root cause on Booster 22 that slips the next flight, or another month in which capital spending outruns the cash the operations produce. Musk’s post says the booster loss does not move his timeline. The bear is the case in which the timeline is what slips.
The ten-session bear at $119.81 is the relevant line for the week of 16 November. It sits through the 6 November low of $128.57 if the move is the full one-sigma step, and it stays nearer Friday’s $136.64 low if the move is mild. A Monday gap is one session inside that ten-session cone.
What X added, and what it did not
The X posts are primary on the event and secondary on the valuation. Musk names a fix, Raptor V3.2 consistency and MECO1 about one second earlier, and he says the booster loss does not change the high-volume timeline. Tice says the root cause is still under investigation. Both can be true this weekend. They will not both stay true if the investigation finds something that one-second change does not cover. The posts carry no price and no capital-spending figure. Friday’s 78.5 million shares are the last completed participation number. The 14 million views measure attention. They do not clear a trade.
A catch the stock can price, and a bill it already has
SpaceX has caught Super Heavy boosters on three earlier test flights. It had not caught a ship coming back from orbit. That is the new fact, and Huot is right to call it the missing link. The equity already knew Flight 14 had reached orbit. The incremental claim is the tower catch, plus Musk’s account that the booster miss has a stated patch.
The incremental fact does not touch the about 52 percent of quarterly revenue that Super Intelligence produced, the $2.37 billion of connectivity operating income, or the $48.07 billion spent over nine months. A holder who rerates the whole company on a ship in the arms is rerating the small, loss-making segment and hoping the multiple on the large one comes along. The house bull allows a large move, to $195.85, because the stock’s own daily swings have been large since June. The house base, $134.74, is what those same swings have been drifting toward. The catch is evidence in that argument. The catch is not the whole argument.
This is not financial advice.
Frequently asked questions
What is the SpaceX stock prediction after the Starship catch?
From the Friday 13 November Nasdaq close of $139.11, the 32 sessions through 31 December 2026 put the bull at $195.85, the base at $134.74 and the bear at $105.01. The inputs are the last 90 daily log-returns. Saturday’s catch is not inside that close. Monday 16 November is the first session that can reflect it.
Did SpaceX catch both stages on Flight 15?
It caught the upper stage, Ship 42, at Starbase on 14 November, 22.5 hours after liftoff, and it deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites. It did not catch Super Heavy. Booster 22’s boostback ended early on low fuel mass, the vehicle diverted offshore, and the flight-termination system fired. SpaceX says the root cause is still under investigation.
How much of SpaceX revenue is the rocket business?
In the quarter ended 30 September 2026, Space revenue was $1.77 billion out of $14.58 billion, about 12 percent, and the segment posted a $7 million operating loss. Super Intelligence was $7.56 billion and connectivity operating income was $2.37 billion. Those figures are from the shareholder letter filed as Exhibit 99.1, as reported by FinanceFeeds on 21 October.
Why is the base case under Friday’s close?
The average daily log-return over the last 90 sessions is negative, minus 0.0009963068. Compounded over 32 sessions it takes $139.11 to $134.74. A catch can lift the next few sessions. The base is what the recent drift does if those sessions resemble the 90 that preceded them.
What did Elon Musk say about the booster?
On X on 14 November he wrote that slight engine underperformance left the booster short of residual propellant, that Raptor V3.2 is the performance work already underway, and that moving MECO1 about one second earlier is the software change. He also wrote that the booster loss does not change his timeline to high-volume, fully reusable Starship flights. Kate Tice said the same day that the root cause of the early boostback shutdown is still being investigated.