Key takeaways
- Raymond James initiated coverage of Space Exploration Technologies with a Strong Buy rating and an $800 price target - the highest on Wall Street.
- The firm's thesis places Starship at the center of a shift toward industrialized access to orbit, which it says, together with AI, amounts to a major infrastructure convergence.
- Raymond James projects a total addressable market approaching $30 trillion and forecasts a rise in SpaceX revenue from about $38.5 billion to more than $837 billion by 2031.
Raymond James launched coverage of Space Exploration Technologies - commonly known as SpaceX - on Tuesday, assigning a Strong Buy rating and setting a price target of $800. Analyst Brian Gesuale framed the call around what he described as a fundamental shift in industrial infrastructure driven by industrialized access to orbit and developments in artificial intelligence.
Gesuale told investors that these forces are creating "the most significant infrastructure convergence since the advent of the Internet," and that SpaceX is constructing "the foundational platform for the next generation of industrial capacity" across transportation, communications, compute, manufacturing and energy.
Central to Raymond James' thesis is Starship. The note states that Starship reduces the cost of transporting mass to orbit by more than 99% while increasing payload capacity by an order of magnitude. The firm said this change recasts orbital launch from a bespoke aerospace capability into a transportation network characterized by commercial aviation-like operating cadence and continuously declining unit costs - a transformation Raymond James likened to past industrial revolutions such as railroads, electrification, containerization and the internet.
Based on these dynamics, Raymond James estimates the total addressable market for the capabilities SpaceX is building approaches $30 trillion. The note highlights what it calls SpaceX's "powerful infrastructure flywheel," summarizing the company's internal funding sequence as: "Falcon funded Starlink, Starlink funds Starship, Starship enables the next generation of platforms."
Raymond James projects substantial top-line and profitability expansion. The firm estimates SpaceX's revenue is currently about $38.5 billion with EBITDA of roughly $17.7 billion, and forecasts growth to more than $837 billion in revenue and $696 billion in EBITDA by 2031.
The $800 price target is derived from a discounted cash flow using a 27 times exit multiple applied to Raymond James' 2031 estimated EBITDA. The firm notes that this multiple can be compared with a peer group multiple of 60.7 times on 2028 estimates.