SpaceX (SPCX): Second Lockup Tranche (328M Shares) Absorbed — Stock Holds ~10% Above IPO
SpaceX's staggered insider-unlock schedule rolled through its second major test, and the sky did not fall. On September 24, up to 328.4 million Class A shares — roughly 7% of shares outstanding — became eligible for sale under the IPO's lockup schedule, the second tranche after 319 million shares were released September 9 (which was followed by a 3.9% decline). Into the unlock, the stock slipped: it closed September 23 at $148.36, down 4.11%, pressured by the disclosure that President Gwynne Shotwell had exercised options on 342,170 shares on September 22 and filed to sell ~$52 million of stock — her first major post-IPO move, under a Rule 10b5-1 plan. But the unlock itself passed without a collapse: shares stabilized around $148.68 by Friday's close, leaving SPCX roughly 10% above its $135 IPO price (it had traded as high as ~$155 earlier in the week). Retail investors who expected the unlock "collapse" were left asking what happened; Mizuho reiterated its Outperform rating into the expiry.
The supply calendar is the story to keep tracking: this is tranche two of staggered releases through December 2026, with a final major expiration in December — Motley Fool is already making "the case for selling SpaceX stock before its December lock-up expiration," arguing the accelerated schedule institutionalizes a persistent overhang. Two structural facts bound the risk: Elon Musk himself is locked up until June 12, 2027 (a 366-day restriction), and the stock's earlier Nasdaq-100 inclusion (double-weighted at the September 18 rebalance, ~$15.5B+ of passive buying per Morgan Stanley) created an index bid that partially offsets insider supply. The stock hit an intraday high of $225.64 on June 16 before pulling back — former Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld has warned it's "not trading on fundamentals."1
For self-directed investors, SPCX has become the cleanest live case study in lockup mechanics: scheduled insider supply vs. index/retail demand, with each tranche date a known volatility event. The December expiration is the last scheduled release of 2026 and the largest remaining overhang test; watch price behavior relative to $135 during that window (see the ongoing watch on this thread).
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An instance of Speculative space valuations collapse the moment public offerings price and physical launchpads burn — Public-market pricing mechanics — staggered lockup tranches, index-inclusion flows, and a 34% drawdown from the June high — now dictate the space flagship's valuation path, the institutional-pricing revaluation the theme predicts. ↩︎