TLDR
- Rocket Lab stock rose ~7% on Monday after Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated a Buy rating on RKLB
- Nasdaq-100 inclusion on June 22 flagged as a key catalyst, expected to bring passive fund and ETF buying
- KeyBanc upgraded RKLB to Overweight with a $135 price target, citing over 30% upside potential
- KeyBanc linked the recent selloff to capital rotation triggered by SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut, not company fundamentals
- Wall Street consensus sits at Strong Buy with an average price target of $108.70 and a high of $150
Rocket Lab (RKLB) jumped roughly 7% on Monday after two analyst calls put the stock back in focus. Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated its Overweight rating, while KeyBanc issued a fresh upgrade — giving investors a reason to buy a stock that had just dropped 11% on June 12.
RKLB is currently down about 27% from its year-to-date high set in late May.
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard pointed to June 22 as a key date. That’s when Rocket Lab officially joins the Nasdaq-100 Index. The move raises the company’s profile with institutional investors and forces passive funds and ETFs tracking the index to buy in.
Sheppard described RKLB’s Nasdaq-100 inclusion as “material” — and given the timing, hard to argue with that read.
Beyond the index addition, Sheppard outlined what he called “material moats” that separate Rocket Lab from newer competitors. These include a long track record of successful launches, a three-rocket lineup (Electron, HASTE, and the upcoming Neutron), a mix of commercial and government customers, and launchpads in both New Zealand and the U.S.
Sheppard ranks 1,456 out of over 12,200 analysts tracked by TipRanks, with a 100% success rate on RKLB and an average return of 196.92% per rating over a one-year period.
KeyBanc’s Case for Buying the Dip
KeyBanc analyst Michael Leshock upgraded RKLB to Overweight with a $135 price target — implying more than 30% upside from its previous close. His thesis centers on the idea that the recent selloff had more to do with market mechanics than company performance.
When SpaceX made its historic Nasdaq debut, institutional funds scrambled to build positions in the newly public aerospace giant. That meant selling existing space holdings — including Rocket Lab. Leshock called it an asset rotation-driven pullback, not a fundamental story.
He pointed to an enduring structural shortage of launch capacity that he expects to keep the market undersupplied for over a decade. Rising demand for satellite constellations and increasing global defense spend on space systems add to that picture.
Rocket Lab closed Q1 with a backlog exceeding $2.2 billion. The company is also in the running for high-profile contracts including NASA’s Mars Telecommunications Orbiter program.
Vertical Integration as a Long-Term Edge
Leshock highlighted Rocket Lab’s vertical integration model as a key differentiator. With roughly 90 successful Electron missions and growing transparency around its Neutron medium-lift program, he said the company is showing “institutional-grade” execution.
He sees RKLB insulating itself from the typical vulnerability of small-launch providers by owning more of the stack — a strategy that mirrors SpaceX’s long-term playbook.
Wall Street broadly views Rocket Lab as the clear No. 2 in commercial space after SpaceX.
The consensus rating on RKLB is Strong Buy, based on 10 Buy ratings and three Holds. The average price target sits at $108.70, with the high-end target at $150 — representing roughly 37% upside from current levels.
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