SpaceX Stock Jumps 7.6% to $171.09 as Morgan Stanley Repeats $300 Target

SpaceX shares ripped 7.63% higher Monday and closed at $171.09 after Morgan Stanley repeated a $300 price target and argued that the market is still underestimating the company’s growth.

The move added $12.13 in one session. It also pushed the stock to its highest close since mid-June, when SpaceX was still riding the first burst of excitement from its historic public debut.

That alone would have made for a strong day.

The more revealing detail is that the rally survived a Falcon 9 auto-abort just before liftoff Monday morning.

SpaceX said the rocket and its 21-satellite payload were healthy. The national-security mission was delayed, but investors did not treat one stopped countdown as a verdict on the company.

Falcon 9 had an auto abort just prior to T-0. Vehicle and payload are in good health, and teams are resetting for a launch attempt no earlier than tomorrow, October 6

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 5, 2026

Monday’s buyers looked past a single Falcon 9 mission.

They bid up the combined value of launch, Starlink, Starship, defense work and SpaceX’s expanding AI-compute plans. The bet is that coming operating milestones will make those businesses worth more than the market is currently giving them.

Stock Analysis records an October 5 open of $158.99, an intraday high of $172.47 and a low of $158.62 before the shares settled at $171.09. Trading volume reached roughly 135.7 million shares, well above the levels seen during several sessions the prior week.

The close marked a second straight gain of more than 7%. SpaceX finished October 2 at $158.96 after closing October 1 at $148.07, so the stock climbed more than 15% across those two sessions.

Even after that run, the shares remained far below their June 16 intraday peak of $225.64. Monday’s close was about 24% under that high, which helps explain why a bullish valuation note could still move a company already valued in the trillions.

Investing.com reports that Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas reiterated an Overweight rating and a $300 target.

SpaceX carries a high headline earnings multiple. Morgan Stanley’s case rests on a different measure: the firm estimates that SpaceX trades roughly 40% below a group of mega-cap AI companies after expected growth is factored in.

Jonas pointed investors toward a cluster of coming milestones, with Starship Flight 15 at the front of the list. His case depends on the market assigning more value to SpaceX’s ability to connect orbital infrastructure, satellite broadband, launch cadence, AI computing and future energy demand.

A $300 target would imply a gain of roughly 75% from Monday’s close. It is still an analyst’s forecast, not a promise, and it rests on assumptions about execution, revenue growth and valuation that can change quickly.

The stock has already proved that point. SpaceX went public at $135, surged above $225 within days, then fell to $104.83 in early August before beginning its latest recovery.

SpaceX said its June offering priced 555,555,555 Class A shares at $135 each. That sale raised $75 billion before underwriting discounts, commissions and offering expenses.

The company also granted underwriters a 30-day option to buy up to 83,333,333 additional shares at the offering price. That option equaled another 15% of the base deal and could have lifted the total sale to 638,888,888 shares.

SpaceX said the shares would begin trading on both the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Texas under the SPCX symbol on June 12. The two listings gave the record-setting offering a national market and a Texas-based venue tied to SpaceX’s home state.

The offering was expected to close June 15, subject to customary conditions, making Monday’s close less than four months removed from the IPO. That short trading history helps explain both the stock’s violent swings and the market’s sensitivity to fresh analyst notes.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Securities served as lead book-running managers. Morgan Stanley’s role in the offering is relevant context for readers weighing its current price target.

SpaceX said the registration statement became effective on June 11. The company directed investors to its final prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the complete terms.

Monday’s $171.09 close sits 26.7% above the $135 offering price. IPO buyers are still ahead, but the path included a surge above $225 and a fall below $105 within the stock’s first two months.

That volatility reflects the difficulty of putting one market value on a company spanning rockets, communications, defense contracts and artificial intelligence.

The operating side is giving investors plenty to argue about.

SpaceX’s Flight 14 mission page says Starship reached orbit and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the vehicle’s first operational satellite deployment. The company reported contact with all 26 spacecraft after release.

That mission moved Starship beyond a pure flight-test spectacle. It demonstrated the payload role SpaceX has been building toward: using the largest rocket ever flown to place much more Starlink capacity into orbit per mission.

Flight 15 now carries a different burden. Investors will be watching for another clean ascent, more evidence that Starship can fly repeatably and progress toward recovering hardware rather than expending it.

Those expectations can create enormous upside when milestones land—and equally sharp disappointment when schedules slip or hardware fails.

Monday’s Falcon 9 abort was a useful reminder that spaceflight remains unforgiving. The rocket’s computers stopped the countdown for a reason, and SpaceX had not publicly identified that trigger when the market closed.

The company has since moved the SDA mission to no earlier than October 8. The rocket never left the pad, and engineers still have work to do before it is cleared.

Investors shrugged because Falcon 9 has a deep operating record and the vehicle never left the pad. The safety system caught a problem before flight, while SpaceX reported both the rocket and payload in good health.

There is a danger in reading too much into any one day. A 7.63% jump does not validate every part of Morgan Stanley’s thesis, and a $300 target does not erase the execution risk built into Starship, orbital computing or SpaceX’s capital needs.

But the session did reveal where the market’s attention is turning.

SpaceX can stop a Falcon 9 countdown carrying a sensitive military payload, reschedule the mission and still add more than 7% in the same trading day.

Rockets still matter. Monday’s trading says the SpaceX story has grown much bigger than one rocket.