Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street.
It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150.
The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings.
Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging.
Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock
The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile.
Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC.
More SpaceX Coverage:
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- SpaceX Nasdaq fast-track just left the S&P 500 flat-footed
The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%.
As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount."
The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying.
How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock
EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted.
SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page.
Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported.
Two terms worth knowing
- Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones.
- Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control.
The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step
The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar.
Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free.
Related: Trump floats intriguing Elon Musk, SpaceX plan
Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares.
That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported.
Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one.
Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place
The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage.
Three things went wrong in six weeks:
- The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30.
- Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes.
- The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing.
The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close.
Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions
A discount you cannot access is not a discount.
SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained.
Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted.
Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported.
EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here.
What EchoStar investors should watch next
Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality.
- EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity.
- SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers.
- Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder.
EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that.
Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over.
Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books.
Related: SpaceX investors may be ignoring troubling trend
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This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 5:07 PM.