TLDR
- SPCX rose 2.22% Friday to $136.97, still down ~15% since its June IPO
- Bernstein kept an Outperform rating and $248 price target but flagged major limits for satellite-only mobile
- Satellite-to-phone distance creates real problems with speed, battery life, and indoor coverage
- Bernstein sees an MVNO partnership as SpaceX’s most realistic path into mobile
- Wall Street has a Moderate Buy on SPCX with an average price target of $228.59, implying ~67% upside
SpaceX stock closed at $136.97 on Friday, up 2.22%, after Bernstein released a detailed report on the company’s push into the U.S. mobile market. The stock is still roughly 15% below its June IPO price.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., SPCX
Bernstein analyst Douglas Harned kept an Outperform rating on SPCX with a $248 price target. But the report took a cautious view of SpaceX’s plan to launch Starlink Mobile by late 2027, targeting a U.S. mobility market worth more than $300 billion a year.
The core issue is physics. A cell tower sits a few kilometers from your phone. A Starlink satellite sits hundreds of kilometers away. That distance weakens the signal and causes problems with upload speeds, indoor coverage, and battery drain.
“Distance, however, remains a stubborn physics problem, even at low-earth-orbit,” Bernstein wrote.
Current Starlink direct-to-device download speeds sit at around 3 Mbps. For comparison, median 5G speeds are 173 Mbps at AT&T, 214 Mbps at Verizon, and 309 Mbps at T-Mobile. Upload speeds are below 1 Mbps.
That gap is hard to ignore, especially as video keeps driving mobile data demand.
V2 Satellites Will Help, But Won’t Close the Gap
SpaceX’s next-generation V2 Mobile satellites should improve things. Bernstein expects them to orbit at 325 to 350 kilometers, down from 525 to 535 kilometers for the current fleet. Stronger antennas are also part of the upgrade.
Even so, Bernstein does not expect satellite-only service to compete with 5G for everyday use. The analysts see texting, emergency connectivity, and rural coverage as realistic near-term uses. High-bandwidth applications like video calls remain out of reach for now.
Bernstein described satellite service as “a complementary layer of connectivity rather than a replacement for terrestrial wireless networks.”
SpaceX’s Best Option May Be a Carrier Partnership
Bernstein laid out three paths for SpaceX: build its own network, buy an existing carrier, or partner with one through an MVNO arrangement.
Building from scratch would require nationwide spectrum and a massive tower rollout. Buying a major carrier brings regulatory headaches and a steep price tag. That leaves the MVNO model, where SpaceX sells mobile service under its own brand while using a carrier’s existing network for most of the actual connectivity.
“A partnership (i.e., MVNO) appears to be the most likely approach,” the analysts wrote.
Bundling broadband and wireless under one Starlink account could make the offering more attractive to consumers.
SpaceX posted Q2 2026 revenue of $7.8 billion, up 92% year-over-year, with Starlink contributing $4.3 billion of that total. Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu projected SpaceX could hit an annualized revenue run rate of $100 billion by end of 2026, driven partly by its growing Neocloud AI infrastructure business.
Wall Street currently rates SPCX a Moderate Buy, based on 33 analyst ratings: 24 Buys, 6 Holds, and 3 Sells. The average price target is $228.59.
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