Space Exploration Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX) stock — aka SpaceX — is marching higher. As I type (21 October), it’s set to open 8% higher across the pond.

If so, this would take SpaceX to $160 per share. That would be roughly 50% higher than the start of August.

Can SpaceX reach $200 by Christmas?

Double beat

The reason for the expected pop today is the space giant’s Q3 results, which were published last night. Both revenue and profits came in higher than expected, as we can see below.

Revenue rocketed 161% year on year to $14.6bn, while net income of $4.4bn was a massive improvement on the $1.1bn net loss a year earlier.

To put that quarterly figure into perspective, it’s not too far off what SpaceX reported for all of 2025 ($18.7bn). So this is a company expanding rapidly.

What’s underpinning this rapid growth?

Launch

As a reminder, SpaceX has three divisions: Space, Connectivity, and Super/Artificial Intelligence (cloud services, Grok, and AI coding assistant Cursor).

Turning to Space first, revenue rose 6% to $1.8bn. Note that SpaceX prioritises its own business rather than that of external customers. Of the 35 launches in the quarter, 23 were internal.

Capital expenditure (capex) totalled $1.6bn, up from $1.1bn, as SpaceX continues to develop and test the world’s heaviest flying object, Starship. This recently achieved its first orbital flight, delivering 26 next-generation satellites to the Starlink constellation.

SpaceX is also doing Starfall microgravity missions. Pharmaceutical and semiconductor companies are very interested in doing microgravity manufacturing/research.

Starlink

Connectivity revenue surged 69% to $5.2bn, with adjusted EBITDA up 82% to $3.5bn. These figures shows how attractive the margins are for this unique global connectivity utility.

The constellation now has over 11,100 satellites, beaming high-speed internet to more than 13.6m consumer subscribers and 3,800 aircraft. Enterprise and government accounted for $2.1bn of revenue.

Each Starship launch will deliver the bandwidth equivalent of roughly 20 Falcon 9 missions. So within the next three years, Musk expects SpaceX to have about 100 times the bandwidth of the current Starlink constellation.

Translation? More exponential growth looks very likely here.

SI/AI

Finally, SI revenue skyrocketed 830% to $7.6bn as new cloud services agreements with Google and Anthropic were activated.

Now, this unit carries the most risk to my mind because Q3 capex was a mind-boggling $16.4bn. If SpaceX loses Google, say, and can’t find third-parties with enough scale, it may struggle to earn good returns on that capital.

A nearer-term risk to the share price is Tesla, which reports later today. If that’s a bad update, investors might sour on the rumoured SpaceX-Tesla merger.

Another blow could be a Starship problem next month when SpaceX attempts to catch both the booster and the ship for the first time.

$200 by Christmas?

After this report, I do think $200 is a possibility before Christmas. The figures show how valuable renting out high-performance AI compute could be, while Elon Musk forecasts annual recurring revenue of $500bn+ by 2028.

Here’s what Wall Street expects (according to MarketScreener):

That said, everything AI-related is extremely volatile today, so it’s impossible to predict anything with certainty. But I’m convinced that SpaceX will soar well above $200 in future.

Therefore, investors braced for turbulence might consider buying the stock for Christmas and beyond.

Should you invest £5,000 in SpaceX right now?

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And right now, Mark thinks there are 6 standout stocks that investors should consider buying. Want to see if SpaceX made the list?

Ben McPoland owns shares of SpaceX.