Eric Trump defended Elon Musk on Thursday, rejecting a Bloomberg column that cast the SpaceX founder as a serial overpromiser. His comment comes the same day 911 million restricted SpaceX shares become free to trade.

SpaceX (SPCX) stock climbed anyway. Shares changed hands near $112.76 late in Thursday morning in New York, up 4.15%. That bounce means less than it appears.

Eric Trump Answers Bloomberg With SpaceX Launch Numbers

In the report, Bloomberg credited Falcon 9 reliability and Starlink profits, but warns that a full mobile phone network could stretch the company too far.

One line did the damage, indicating that Musk has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering.

Eric Trump quoted that line back and answered it with launch data.

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The flight count holds up. SpaceX flew 165 Falcon 9 missions during 2025. That was roughly 85% of all United States orbital launches and close to double China’s output. One booster flew 32 times.

His mass figure is shakier. Public trackers count launches rather than payload weight, so the 80% to 85% claim is hard to test. Musk reposted the thread and called Bloomberg garbage.

The $18 Billion Number Behind the SpaceX Stock Slide

Neither man named the actual cause of the selloff. SpaceX reported earnings on Tuesday. Revenue hit $7.8 billion, up 92% and ahead of the $6.8 billion analysts expected.

Capital spending broke the story. SpaceX spent $18.4 billion in the quarter, against forecasts near $13 billion. That is more than twice what it earned in revenue.

Shares fell 13.61% on Wednesday to $108.27. Bloomberg had nothing to do with it. Jim Cramer had already flagged the unlock as a reason to wait.

Supply is the second problem. Roughly 911.5 million shares cleared their first lock-up on Thursday. That batch was worth close to $98.7 billion at Wednesday’s close.

The tradable float now roughly doubles. It moves from about 5% of the company to 12%, reviving an older thin float valuation debate.

Short sellers had crowded in first. Exchange data showed 165 million shares sold short at the July 15 settlement date, near 26% of the float. Later filings put the number around 219 million by July 29.

That detail explains Thursday. Heavy short interest hands any rally fuel, since bears must buy stock back to close out.

What Facebook’s 2012 Unlock Says About SpaceX Stock

History offers a clean test. Facebook walked into the same setup in 2012.

Its first lock-up freed 271 million shares on Aug. 16. The stock closed that day at $19.87, down more than 6%, a record low at the time. Volume ran five times normal.

The larger release went the other way. When 773 million shares came free on Nov. 14, Facebook gained 12.6%. Mark Zuckerberg held 504 million of them and said he would not sell.

Valuation professor Aswath Damodaran later studied the pattern across many listings. He found expiries shave 2% to 5% off a stock on average, yet about a third of them end higher. Volume jumps every time.

Thursday therefore looks ordinary rather than bullish. Bulls still see a floor here. Musk has called the slump an obvious entry point. One trader placed a $20 million options bet on a rebound.

Eight more tranches follow through December, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until 2027.

Source: BeInCrypto