SpaceX (SPCX) will make the 13th test flight of its Starship rocket no earlier than Thursday, while another Wall Street bank is bullish on the company.
The rocket, the largest and most powerful ever built, is scheduled to lift off from Starbase, Texas, around 6:45 p.m. Eastern time. Flight 13 is the second launch of Starship Version 3, a larger, more powerful design that debuted less than two months ago. During its most recent launch, back in May, the Super Heavy booster suffered thermal damage during separation when it was pushed into an unexpected position and then failed to return when some of its engines failed to restart. The launch vehicle was lost.
SpaceX has been flying and improving the vehicle since 2023, and it remains key to the company’s plans to launch heavy payloads, deploy satellites and eventually fly to the Moon and Mars.
The run comes as SpaceX shares have been struggling since the company went public on June 12. The stock is down nearly 7% in the past five days and is down more than 38% from its peak of $225.64.
But investment bank Evercore ISI believes the sell-off is exaggerated. The company initiated coverage on SpaceX on Tuesday with an “outperform” rating and a $230 price target, suggesting upside potential of about 65% from its closing price of $139.14.
Analyst Kutgun Maral called SpaceX “an outstanding company on a real path to changing the future of humanity” and one whose parts reinforce each other. “(SpaceX is) a single, vertically integrated machine that turned reusable, low-cost launch into a near-monopoly on access to orbit, leveraged that advantage to turn Starlink into a massive, money-making franchise, and is now turning that same flywheel to artificial intelligence infrastructure,” he wrote.
Like other analysts, Maral notes SpaceX’s big opportunities in launch, the Starlink broadband network, satellite-to-phone mobile communications, ground computing and, ultimately, orbital data centers, describing all five businesses as interconnected.
General view of the SpaceX building and Starship rocket in Starbase, Texas, June 11, 2026. (REUTERS/Gabriel V. Cardenas) · Reuters / REUTERS
Evercore’s model calls for total revenue and EBITDA of 106% and 157%, respectively, through 2028, with operating margin increasing from 35% to 69% over the same period. Maral said he believes “growth may accelerate rather than slow as the decade passes.”
Although generally optimistic, Maral tempers his enthusiasm, warning that “there is still a lot to prove.” And Starship’s launch on Thursday is one big piece of thesis.
Maral notes that Starship has not yet proven that it can scale, and the first operational load is planned for the second half of this year. Starlink’s broadband and mobile offerings should gain traction, the viability of orbital computing won’t be tested until 2029 or later, and SpaceX’s Grok and Cursor AI products should gain a real foothold against entrenched enterprise competitors.