SpaceX earnings Oct. 20: the bar Q2 set and what has changed since

SpaceX will report third-quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, Oct. 20, and hold an audio webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, the company said on Friday. It is the second report since SPCX began trading on June 12, and the first to include Cursor, the AI coding company SpaceX bought in August for 389 million new shares. The stock closed Friday at $146.03.

Last time, the stock rose 9.4% on the day of the report and fell 13.6% the day after, to $108.27, its lowest close since the listing. SpaceX gave no revenue or earnings guidance in its second-quarter release, so Tuesday's numbers will be judged against what it has already reported. TECHi worked through those figures to find what changes in the third quarter: a much larger share count, a full quarter of interest on a $25 billion bond, and an AI capital bill that doubled in the second quarter.

When does SpaceX report earnings?

SpaceX said in an Oct. 16 release that it will post third-quarter results after the close on Tuesday, Oct. 20. Management will discuss them on a live audio-only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, livestreamed on X and replayed at ir.spacex.com. The company has also opened a Q&A platform where investors can send questions ahead of the call.

The Aug. 4 report is the only precedent, and one data point is a thin sample. SPCX closed 9.4% higher that day, then dropped 13.6% on Aug. 5 after a quarter in which revenue grew 92%. Two sessions later it had recovered 22.9% from that low, to $133.11. The swing shows how wide the range of reactions can be. It does not say which way the next one will go.

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SPCX daily closes since the June 12 listing. Source: Nasdaq closing prices; TECHi calculations.

The backdrop is rougher now. SPCX has fallen 15.1% since the Oct. 6 close, while the Nasdaq-100 fell 6.5%, and the chip index lost eight sessions in a row through Friday, as TECHi reported. The stock is still 16.5% above its Aug. 4 close.

What SpaceX's Q2 results set as the bar

SpaceX reports three segments, and the second quarter moved all of them. TECHi's earlier look at where the AI capital went covers the segment mix. The table sets the Q2 figures against Q1, which is the comparison Tuesday's numbers will extend.

Growth of that size will be hard to repeat. AI revenue more than tripled because new cloud agreements started billing: the company says they produced $1.6 billion of the quarter's AI revenue and total $14.1 billion of contracted sales. The release does not say over what period that $14.1 billion will be recognized, so TECHi cannot turn it into a quarterly run-rate. Starlink added 1.7 million subscribers while monthly revenue per user held at $66. Repeating that would put the base at 13.7 million.

What has changed since the last report?

Cursor is the largest change. SpaceX closed the acquisition on Aug. 14 and paid in stock: 389,289,254 Class A shares, plus 1,752,426 for vested restricted units, at an implied equity value of $60.0 billion, according to the 8-K filed that day. It also took on about 29 million restricted stock units and 44 million options. Tuesday's report is the first that should include Cursor, from Aug. 14 through Sept. 30. The filing does not say how much revenue or loss that adds.

Interest is the second change. SpaceX sold $25 billion of senior notes on June 26 at a weighted average rate of 5.855%. That left five days of interest in the second quarter and leaves a full quarter in the third: about $366 million, against roughly $20 million in Q2, before any interest capitalized into construction. On the other side, the listing and the notes lifted cash and securities to $100.0 billion by June 30, from $24.7 billion of cash at the end of 2025. Each percentage point of yield on $100 billion is $250 million a quarter, so interest income, which was $340 million in Q2, can swing widely before spending draws the balance down.

The share count is the third, and the one most likely to trip up a quick comparison. Q2's loss of $0.09 a share used a weighted average of 5.86 billion shares. By July 28, the 10-Q cover shows 7.70 billion Class A and 5.49 billion Class B shares outstanding, 13.18 billion in all. Spread the same $541 million loss across the roughly 13.4 billion shares that TECHi's arithmetic puts the third-quarter average near, and it becomes about $0.04 a share with no change in the business.

The cash cushion is large but not endless. In Q2, capital spending of $18.4 billion ran $14.8 billion ahead of adjusted EBITDA. At that gap, $100.0 billion covers about 6.7 quarters, without counting Cursor, which was paid for in stock. AI capital spending doubled from Q1 to Q2. If it climbs again in Q3, the runway shortens, and if it levels off, it lengthens.

What would change the read

The bull case sits in the segment table. Connectivity earned $1.66 billion from operations in Q2, and the AI segment swung to adjusted EBITDA of $1.15 billion from a $609 million loss in Q1. If AI revenue holds above $2.5 billion while capital spending stops doubling, the quarter would read as a business starting to fund its own build-out. The bear case is the last report itself: revenue grew 92% and the stock still fell 13.6% the next day, so a strong quarter has not been enough by itself.

TECHi would treat three results as a change in the picture: Starlink net adds below Q2's 1.7 million, AI capital spending above $15.8 billion without matching revenue, or a Cursor contribution that SpaceX declines to break out.

The same week tests the wider AI trade. Meta reports after the close on Wednesday, Oct. 21, with its call at 4:30 p.m. ET. Tesla reports the same day. Lam Research, which makes chip equipment, holds its call at 2 p.m. Pacific that afternoon, and the Federal Reserve meets on Oct. 27 and 28. SpaceX's agreement to buy Grain Management's 800 MHz spectrum, announced Oct. 8 and subject to FCC approval, came after the quarter ended and will not appear in these results. Until the release, the one fixed point is the date: Tuesday, Oct. 20, after the close.