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Last two months have been quite interesting to observe the space stocks. I had been following them for quite a few months now (long before SpaceX IPO) and saw their rise (some reaching ATHs) in the period leading to SapceX IPO (some even before that) and then their fall to levels not imagined in the days and weeks after the IPO. The market was so excited with SpaceX that they priced everything already into the price of these space stocks before the IPO and when it IPO'd there wasn't any furrther room to grow for these space stockls which were also being used as proxy stocks before SpaceX to get into the space play.
SPCX hit a record low near $139, below its $150 first trade and closing in on its $135 IPO price, one month after listing. Rocket Lab is down \~49% from its May high, AST SpaceMobile \~50%, Redwire \~63%, Firefly \~69%, Intuitive Machines \~82%. And Monday alone wiped an estimated $89 billion off the group triggered not by anything fundamental at these companies, but by another country successfully landing a reusable booster.
Before going further, worth noting that there are two schools of thought that dominate every space stock thread. One side treats these companies as untouchable, every dip is an oppurtunity, every short report can be ignored, every valuation concern gets answered with (maybe) delusional end objectives. The other side dismisses the entire sector as trash, pre-revenue lottery tickets for bag holders, destined for zero the moment the hype cycle moves on.
The true believers have to explain why they're comfortable with 50-250x sales multiples on companies that have never made a dollar of profit and the trash-callers have to explain why worthless companies keep signing billion-dollar contracts with AT&T, Verizon, the Space Force, and the U.S. government.
So let's have the honest discussion
**What the 'these are trash stocks' crowd gets right:**
Not one major public space name is profitable. Every single one loses money per share, Rocket Lab is actually the *closest* to breakeven at -$0.33/share, and it trades at 72x trailing sales. AST SpaceMobile trades at roughly 258x trailing revenue. There is no spreadsheet that defends these numbers. You defend them with a story, and "story stock" is a fair criticism when the story keeps getting more expensive while the profits stay theoretical. Add constant dilution, heavy insider selling and a sector that just proved it can get cut in half in seven weeks.
**What that crowd gets wrong:**
The demand is not fake. Rocket Lab's backlog more than doubled year-over-year to $2.2 billion, and it signed more launch contracts in Q1 than in all of 2025 combined. AST holds over $1.2 billion in contracted commitments from partners like AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone, those are signed agreements. Defense space spending is real and politically durable. The revenue at these companies is growing 25-90% a year. Unprofitable and fake are different accusations and conflating them is how people might have missed Amazon at its dot-com bottom down 90%+ while the underlying thesis remained completely correct.
**What these stocks actually are:**
Venture capital with a ticker symbol. That's the honest framing. Early Amazon, Tesla, and Nvidia were all the similar at various points, unprofitable companies burning cash toward a future the market couldn't price. But you can see these space companies' progress in public filings every quarter, and what those filings show right now is genuinely unusual for a sector considered speculative and hype based.
Rocket Lab just posted its first $200M+ revenue quarter, grew 63% year over year, doubled its backlog to $2.2 billion. ASTS has satellites in orbit, gateway licenses being granted, three more BlueBirds launching in August, and signed revenue-sharing agreements with the largest telecom carriers in the Western world. Redwire's hardware flew on NASA's Artemis II, the first crewed Artemis mission and it holds a spot on the Space Force's $1.8 billion Andromeda program. It just posted a record $498 million backlog on 58% revenue growth.
Here's what the actual numbers look like across the sector right now, prices, drawdowns, revenue, and what's actually sitting in the order books. I am just putting it out here for everyone.
||RKLB|ASTS|RDW|VOYG|LUNR|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
||
|PRICE|$76.73|$71.20|$9.59|$29.66|$15.10|
|%age below ATH|\~49.19%|**-56.18%**|\~64.03%|\~59.89%|\~81.58%|
|TTM revenue|$679.58M|**$85.00M**|\~335.38M|$166.42M|$334.287M|
|Confirmed backlog|$2.20B|$3.50B (Cash reserve)|$498.1M|$598M|$1.10B|
|TTM P/S Ratio|64.1x|231.2x|4.9x|10.5x|7.7x|
**The uncomfortable question for both sides:**
Bears: If these are trash, why is the actual order flow, contracted backlog, and government demand accelerating while the stocks fall. At what price does a real $2.2B backlog stop being trash.
Bulls: If the theses are so strong, why did the entire sector need SpaceX's halo to hold its multiples and what exactly happens if Neutron slips past Q4 again.