PhillipCapital Sharply Upgrades SpaceX Rating as AI Computing Demand Becomes Core Bullish Thesis
nashnova research
PhillipCapital flipped SpaceX from Sell straight to Buy, hiking its target from $75 to $250 — implying 73% upside. The trigger: AI compute revenue that blew past expectations.
From Sell to Buy — why did one firm completely reverse its call?
Analyst Glenn Thum upgraded SpaceX (SPCX) from Sell to Buy, lifting the target from $75 to $250.
This means → it is not a minor tweak but a full reversal — triggered by SpaceX's across-the-board Q3 beat.
Q3 adjusted EPS came in at $0.45 on revenue of $14.58 billion, both above consensus, marking the company's first profitable quarter since listing.
What drove the beat? Three engines, three contributions.
AI business (internally branded "Superintelligence," or SI): new cloud-service contracts came online at higher prices, and Cursor added $608 million in incremental revenue from mid-August.
Connectivity business: aviation installations and Starshield government contracts pushed enterprise and government revenue up 91% year-over-year.
Operating leverage: high-margin cloud services turned the SI segment profitable, lifting overall margins. In plain terms = the most profitable business grew fastest, so each extra dollar of revenue dropped more profit to the bottom line.
What is the core bull case — and where is the bottleneck?
Glenn Thum pins his bull thesis on one line: "compute demand keeps outrunning supply." Contract renewals are repricing higher, and new capacity pays back in under a year.
Company guidance points to Q1 2027 revenue exceeding more than double Q3 2026.
Yet he concedes his full-year 2027 forecast sits below the company's annualized guidance. This means → he expects cooling and power-supply constraints to slow the capacity buildout — growth will not extrapolate in a straight line.
Where does the Street stand — and how did the stock react?
SpaceX rose about 2% in pre-market trading after the upgrade.
Of 43 analyst ratings, 33 are Buy or Strong Buy; the average target is $249.24, with the highest at $800.
In plain terms = most analysts were already bullish. PhillipCapital's flip looks more like "catching up with consensus" than a contrarian call.
Why did the merger talk send both stocks down?
Musk publicly endorsed a SpaceX-Tesla merger on the Q3 earnings call; both companies have formed special committees to explore feasibility.
Tesla fell 3% on Thursday; SpaceX dropped 9%, sliding below its June IPO opening price.
This reflects immediate market anxiety, not enthusiasm — SpaceX's market cap sits near $2 trillion, Tesla's at roughly $1.5 trillion. A stock-swap deal would need approval from more than 50% of all Tesla shareholders, a bar Musk himself called "quite high."
Can this bear-to-bull flip be validated? What is the key test?
On the subsequent Tesla earnings call, Musk said he had "said everything there is to say"; Tesla's head of investor relations stated management "will not respond on the matter."
This means → no near-term merger progress is likely; market attention will swing back to fundamentals.
Whether AI compute revenue can keep delivering high growth before the cooling and power bottlenecks are resolved is the pivotal test for this upgrade call.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。