Shares of Space Exploration Technologies fell sharply again Friday, dropping 5.83%, or $7.65, to $123.46, extending a punishing slide that has now dragged the stock more than 45% below its all-time high just one month after its record-setting Wall Street debut.

Friday’s decline marks the latest leg of a selloff that has accelerated since SpaceX shares first breached their $135 initial public offering price earlier this week. The stock closed at $135.27 on Wednesday, its first close below the IPO price since going public, before continuing to slide through Thursday and into Friday’s session, with shares briefly touching an all-time low near $130.74 before Friday’s move pushed the stock even lower.

SpaceX made its long-anticipated Wall Street debut on June 12, pricing its initial public offering at $135 per share after raising $85.7 billion, more than its original $75 billion target, in what became the largest IPO in history. Shares opened trading at $150, climbed nearly 20% on their first day, and continued advancing in the days that followed, eventually reaching an all-time high of $225.64 on June 16, just four days after the listing. That peak valuation pushed SpaceX’s market capitalization above $2 trillion, a threshold that other trillion-dollar companies like Nvidia and Apple took years to reach after going public.

Since that mid-June high, however, the stock has fallen in nearly every trading session, according to data from NBC News, with the company’s market value shedding more than $1.2 trillion from its peak. The company’s move to issue $25 billion in additional debt just days after its IPO added to investor unease, while short sellers have increasingly piled into the stock, with paper losses on those bearish bets reportedly approaching $4 billion as of earlier this week, according to NBC News reporting. Separately, TradingView data indicated short interest in the stock has climbed to roughly 181 million shares, or approximately 28% of the available float, with short sellers estimated to have booked a mark-to-market gain of roughly $3.8 billion as the stock has continued falling.

The most immediate catalyst behind this week’s acceleration lower came Thursday evening, when SpaceX aborted the 13th test flight of its Starship rocket at the very last second, just as the vehicle’s countdown reached zero. According to SpaceX and confirmed by CEO Elon Musk, four of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor 3 engines failed to ignite during the startup sequence, triggering an automated launch abort after more than 11.5 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen had already been loaded into the rocket. SpaceX’s launch team posted on the social platform X that they were “standing down from today’s flight test attempt” shortly after the scrub.

Musk confirmed the root cause of the failure within hours of the abort, writing on X that “some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort.” He said two of the affected Raptor engines would need to be removed and replaced before another launch attempt, adding that the “most probable launch timing is early next week.” SpaceX’s stock fell more than 3% in after-hours trading Thursday immediately following the scrub, according to CNN, setting the stage for Friday’s continued decline during regular trading.

Thursday’s aborted flight would have marked the second test launch of Starship’s upgraded Version 3 design, a larger and more powerful iteration of the vehicle that debuted less than two months earlier. The rocket’s previous flight in May ended in the loss of the Super Heavy booster after it suffered heat damage during stage separation and several of its engines failed to reignite during its planned return to the launch site. Starship remains central to SpaceX’s long-term ambitions, including heavy-lift satellite deployment and eventual crewed missions to the moon and Mars, making continued setbacks in its testing program a closely watched factor for investors assessing the company’s broader growth trajectory.

Despite the stock’s steep decline since its IPO, Wall Street analysts have largely remained bullish on SpaceX’s longer-term prospects. According to data from Investing.com, 27 analysts currently recommend buying the stock, compared with just one recommending a sell, resulting in an overall Buy rating. The average 12-month price target across covering analysts stands at $244.50, implying substantial potential upside from current trading levels, though estimates vary widely, ranging from a high target of $800 to a low estimate of just $62. Much of that bullish sentiment has been tied to SpaceX’s diversified business mix, spanning rocket launches, satellite broadband through Starlink, satellite-to-phone connectivity, and artificial intelligence infrastructure tied to the company’s merger with Musk’s xAI venture.

The sharp reversal in SpaceX’s stock price has had a notable impact on Musk’s personal net worth, which is now concentrated primarily in his SpaceX holdings. Following the IPO, Musk’s fortune reportedly surged from around $700 billion to as much as $1.32 trillion at the stock’s peak valuation in mid-June, a gain that has since eroded considerably alongside the broader decline in share price.

Retail investors who purchased shares at the stock’s Day 1 opening price of $150 have also seen their investments shrink meaningfully, with that entry point now representing a loss of more than 11% based on Thursday’s closing price alone, a figure that has only grown following Friday’s additional decline. SpaceX’s next scheduled earnings report is set for August 6, an event investors are likely to watch closely for further insight into the company’s operational performance and any updates on the timeline for its next Starship launch attempt, now expected sometime early next week following the engine replacements Musk outlined in the wake of Thursday’s abort.