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Oppenheimer launches first coverage of SpaceX with bullish outlook<body><p>STORY: A day ahead of the highly anticipated SpaceX IPO, a major Wall Street firm is already making a bullish case for the stock.</p><p>:: SpaceX</p><p>:: $190</p><p>Oppenheimer on Thursday became the first global brokerage to start coverage of Elon Musk's SpaceX, issuing an "outperform" rating on the stock and setting a price target of $190.</p><p>That's more than 40% higher than SpaceX's IPO price of $135.</p><p>:: SpaceX</p><p>:: $2.5 trillion</p><p>The $190 price target means Oppenheimer expects the rocket company to notch a market capitalization of about $2.5 trillion in the next 12-18 months.</p><p>In a note published Thursday, an Oppenheimer analyst said the brokerage firm sees SpaceX as, quote, "the only vertically integrated AI company with the required capital, data, LLMs, hardware, manufacturing and engineering talent."</p><p>It expects the Starlink satellite internet service to be the main cash generator, and SpaceX's AI business, including xAI, to become the largest contributor over time.</p><p>New Street Research soon followed, initiating coverage with a 12-month price target of $165.</p><p>But not all analysts are believers just yet.</p><p>Earlier this month, Morningstar pegged the company's valuation at $780 billion, less than half of what SpaceX is reportedly targeting in its IPO.</p><p>Nicolas Owens is an equity analyst at Morningstar.</p><p>"With everything going right, and those commercial, outcomes working our valuation would be $154 a share. We only assign that a 7% probability of happening, though. So I think I don't think of myself as bearish. I think that, the deal as it's priced today essentially is pricing in everything going right all the time. // That's where we arrive at this at $63 fair value per share."</p><p>Morningstar said prospects for SpaceX's AI business, which includes xAI and social media platform X, were uncertain.</p></body>