Space Stocks Are Down Hard - but the Signals Remain Surprisingly Strong

By AltIndex Research · 12 min read · July 16, 7:44 pm

Space stocks have shed 30% to 45% of their value in a single month, hammered by profit-taking, the SpaceX IPO, and a wave of dilutive dealmaking. But the job postings data shows that the majority of the space companies are still growing strong.

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) just dropped 17% in a single session, trading near $55 after pricing its second billion-dollar convertible raise of the year. Rocket Lab (RKLB) is down 12% to around $67, a level it first crossed back in March. SpaceX (SPCX), the IPO that was supposed to lift the whole sector, has fallen all the way back to its $135 listing price. A month ago, this group could do no wrong. Rocket Lab gained 25% in the last week of June alone, and AST SpaceMobile jumped 30% over the same stretch.

The reflex is to assume something broke inside these companies. Our data says the opposite. At AltIndex, we track the stock prices but also job postings, Reddit activity, social sentiment, etc and those signals still look very strong. Companies cut hiring when their business deteriorates. That's not the case here.

-36% RKLB, past month	-35% ASTS, past month	-43% LUNR, past month
+36% RKLB job postings since April	+110% ASTS job postings since April	-46% LUNR job postings since March

Three Sell Orders Stacked on Top of Each Other

The first force is the simplest: the sector went parabolic and ran out of buyers. Rocket Lab traded near $66 in late March and peaked around $144 in late May, a move of more than 115% in two months. AST SpaceMobile ran from the low $70s in early May to over $118 by month end. When Rocket Lab added another 25% in the final week of June, retail boards were posting victory laps, and a widely shared WallStreetBets gains post on July 2 marked the top almost to the day. Our Reddit tracking caught the frenzy in real time, with weekly RKLB mentions running above 190 per week through the May melt-up, roughly five times their March baseline.

The second force is SpaceX. The company raised about $86 billion in June in the largest IPO ever, and demand for the debut was so hot that investors sold their existing space holdings to fund allocations. The pure-plays became the ATM for SPCX orders. Since then the new listing itself has round-tripped to its $135 IPO price, dragging sentiment for the whole basket down with it.

The third force is dilution, and it arrived from two directions in three weeks. On June 29, Rocket Lab announced an $8 billion cash-and-stock deal to acquire Iridium Communications, funded partly by a $3.6 billion bridge loan plus additional debt and equity financing. The strategic logic is Starlink's playbook: own the rockets and the constellation. The market's concern is the check. Analyst consensus price targets on RKLB in our feed ground down from roughly $110 in early July to $84 within ten days, a repricing of the dilution rather than the story. Then on July 15, AST SpaceMobile priced $1 billion of 1.625% convertible senior notes due 2034, its second billion-dollar convertible this year, with a conversion price of $79.57 and filing language about acquiring or partnering with a launch provider to reduce reliance on third parties. The stock gapped down overnight and kept falling.

AltIndex Price and AI Score Data

Notice what the orange line does not do. Through a 48% drawdown from the May peak, Rocket Lab's AI Score has held between 54 and 64 and sits at 61 today, still in buy territory. The score weighs hiring, audience growth, customer signals, and fundamentals alongside price. When the non-price inputs hold firm while the price collapses, the score barely moves. That is exactly what has happened here.

The Businesses Behind the Tickers Are Still Accelerating

Rocket Lab's Q1 2026 was the strongest quarter in its history, with revenue of $200.35 million, up 63.5% year over year, and backlog reaching $2.2 billion. Our data shows the top line climbing every single quarter for two years, from $92.8 million in Q1 2024 to $179.7 million in Q4 2025 and now past $200 million. The company was selected for the Space Based Interceptor program under Golden Dome alongside Raytheon, and its medium-lift Neutron rocket is targeting a Q4 2026 debut. The next earnings report lands August 5.

AST SpaceMobile went from $0.7 million in quarterly revenue in Q1 2025 to $54.3 million by Q4 2025 as its BlueBird network began generating money. Management has reaffirmed 2026 revenue guidance of $150 million to $200 million, targets roughly 45 BlueBird satellites in orbit by year end, and counts nearly 60 mobile network operator agreements covering more than 3 billion subscribers. Intuitive Machines is guiding to $900 million to $1 billion in 2026 revenue. Behind all three sits a U.S. FY2027 space budget of $59.7 billion funding 31 launches, a step-change in government demand.

What Our Hiring Data Shows

Companies telegraph their internal outlook through job postings months before it shows up in earnings. It is one of the most reliable signals we track, and right now it is flatly contradicting the tape on two of these three names.

AltIndex Job Postings Data

Rocket Lab's active job postings bottomed near 194 in late April and have climbed almost every week since, reaching roughly 280 today. The hiring accelerated straight through the Iridium announcement and the July selloff. A company bracing for trouble does not add 36% to its open headcount while its stock is being cut in half.

AST SpaceMobile's ramp is steeper. Postings ran near 148 in April and peaked at 359 in late June, a jump of more than 140%, before easing to around 311 in the last two weeks. That late pullback from the peak is worth watching, but a company holding over 300 open roles against roughly 150 three months ago is scaling, not retrenching. The hiring wave lines up with the satellite production and launch cadence management has promised for the back half of 2026.

Postings are intentions, not payroll, so we checked the payroll. AST SpaceMobile's headcount (according to LinkedIn data) grew from 816 in early February to 1,070 by late June, up 31%, confirming the postings are converting into actual hires.

Retail conviction tells the same story. RKLB's Reddit sentiment has held near 0.69 on our scale through the entire drawdown, and weekly mentions are up more than 120% month over month. The discussion shifted from celebration to debate, but it did not turn negative, and it did not leave.

Intuitive Machines Is the Exception That Proves the Signal

Every claim above runs in reverse for Intuitive Machines. Its job postings have fallen from around 103 in mid-March to 56 today, a 46% decline that started well before the July selloff. Its AI Score sits at 45, hold territory and the weakest of the trio. And it has suffered the deepest price decline of the group, down 43% in a month to under $15.

AltIndex Price and Job Postings Data

This is the chart that separates signal from noise. For LUNR, price and hiring are falling together, which is what a genuine deterioration looks like in our data. For RKLB and ASTS, the two lines have torn apart, a setup we have now studied systematically across our full warehouse. Since 2023 we count 42 instances of a company worth more than $10 billion losing at least 25% in a month while its job postings grew at least 20%. A hundred and twenty days later those stocks were higher 71% of the time, with a median gain of 8.7% and an average of 18.8%. Crashes without the hiring signal resolved the other way, with the average stock that fell 25% in a month losing a further 3.7% over the next 120 days. One of the 42 was AST SpaceMobile itself in November 2025, and it gained 64% over the following 60 days. Forty-two events is a small sample and no guarantee, but the pattern has favored the hiring signal by a wide margin, and the full methodology and event list are in the study. The distinction matters because it tells you which declines are about the companies and which are about the shareholders.

The Risks Are Real, Starting With Dilution

The bear case does not need the businesses to fail. Rocket Lab executed a $450 million at-the-market raise in Q1, is layering on billions in debt and new equity for Iridium, and trades near 70 times trailing sales even after the pullback, with no profitable quarter on the books. AST SpaceMobile has now raised $2 billion in converts this year, and while capped calls lift the effective conversion price to $149.20, the paper stacks up faster than the revenue.

The Iridium deal deserves a second look before it gets filed under dilution, because it changes the valuation math more than the headline suggests. Iridium generated $871.7 million of revenue in 2025, up 5%, with $495.3 million of operational EBITDA and $114.4 million of net income, and projects $318 million of pro forma free cash flow in 2026 from 2.5 million subscribers. Rocket Lab's trailing four quarters total roughly $680 million of revenue. The combination more than doubles the top line and attaches a profitable, cash-generating business to a company that has never printed a positive quarter, which cuts the sales multiple by more than half on a deal-adjusted basis. The trade-off is the balance sheet: a $3.6 billion bridge loan, new share issuance, and an integration that will not close until mid-2027. The risk shifts from valuation to leverage and execution, but the sticker multiple overstates what buyers at today's price are actually paying for.

Neither company is racing a cash wall. AST SpaceMobile ended March with roughly $3.5 billion in cash and restricted cash, adds about $984 million in net proceeds from this week's notes, and guides to $575 to $650 million of 2026 capital expenditures alongside adjusted operating expenses near $91 million per quarter, with management stating the constellation of roughly 90 satellites is fully funded. Rocket Lab's quarterly EBITDA loss narrowed from $52.3 million in mid-2025 to $21.9 million by Q4 and it reported over $2 billion in liquidity before the deal. These raises are offensive, capital taken to move faster, which carries its own risk. Aggressive hiring and constellation spending are the burn, and every quarter of Neutron slippage or BlueBird launch delay extends the runway these companies need to buy.

Insider activity added supply at the worst moment, though less deliberately than the timing suggests. Our insider tracking flagged heavy Rocket Lab selling in early July, and the Form 4 shows a family trust tied to CEO Peter Beck sold 3,275,779 shares for roughly $286 million across July 6 to 8, within days of the top. The same filing shows the trades executed automatically under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted on March 27, 2026, months before the Iridium deal and the run-up, and the trust retains the vast majority of its stake. Scripted sales carry little information about management's current view, but $286 million of stock hitting a falling tape is real supply either way. At AST SpaceMobile, Rakuten unloaded 1.35 million shares in April at $86.22 and executives sold steadily through May and June in the $76 to $96 range, worth watching as the company issues new paper below those prices.

The Bottom Line

The space selloff is a shareholder story, not yet a business story. The SpaceX IPO drained the buyers, the blow-off top invited the sellers, and $9 billion of dealmaking handed both a reason to hit the bid. Meanwhile Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile are hiring like companies that believe their own guidance, and our AI Scores have refused to follow the prices down. The best space stocks are still hot.

The tell going forward is whether the hiring lines hold, and the companies keep growing. If RKLB postings keep grinding higher into the August 5 earnings report and ASTS postings stabilize above 300, the alternative data will have called this a liquidation, not a verdict. If they roll over the way LUNR's did in March, the market will have been early, not wrong.

Disclosure: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. AltIndex aggregates publicly available alternative data signals. Past signal performance does not guarantee future results. Always do your own due diligence before making investment decisions.