Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket flies into orbit after launch from the Kennedy Space Center on its maiden flight, in Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 16, 2025.
Greg Newton | AFP | Getty Images
Space shares of Pure-play rose on Tuesday, a rise that one Wall Street analyst attributed to exuberance in the sector after Pres. Donald Trump‘with inauguration.
“After the election, there seems to be very deep and broad excitement about the opening of private space opportunities,” Deutsche analyst Edison Yu told CNBC.
“It’s not just the headlines. When you talk to anybody [venture capital] investor, any institutional investor, any family office … it just seems that everyone has become much more interested and excited [about] space,” said Yu, whose coverage includes six space companies: BlackSky, Iridium, Planet, Rocket laboratory, Telesat and Viasat.
Several of the sector’s stocks rose nearly 20% or more without clear individual catalysts, including Mynaricrocket lab, Swing, Intuitive machinesPlanet i Sidus.
Redwire, up 51.4%, was the best day after it announced the planned acquisition defense technology company Edge Autonomy for nearly $1 billion and, as a result, forecast revenue for the full year 2025 could reach as much as $605 million, roughly double last year.
Investors also boosted Viasat, up 32.9 percent repeated yes NASA chose him as one of the four companies for a five-year communications contract worth as much as 4.8 billion dollars, for the provision of satellite connection services as part of the “Near Space Network”.
Trump briefly touched on space in his inauguration speech, but did not mention NASA or the space agency’s Artemis program, its current top priority that aims to return astronauts to the moon.
“We will follow our manifest destiny to the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” Trump said with the SpaceX CEO Elon Musk cheering in the crowd behind him.
Space supplies generally have gathered since the presidential electionwith several doubling or more in share price over the past three months, according to FactSet.
Deutsche’s Yu pointed to three catalysts driving the industry: Trump’s nomination of Jared Isaacman to be the next NASA administrator, significant trading volume from retail investors, and the expectation of more multibillion-dollar federal contracts.
“After Jared Isaacman was chosen to be the next administrator of NASA, it was very well received by the institutional community. If you talk to investors who follow space closely, if you talk to people who run companies, it was seen as very positive,” Yu said.
Space supplies have largely recovered in 2024 after sector greatly declined in the years before. Several are up over the past 12 months, according to FactSet, with Intuitive Machines up 779%, Redwire up 715%, AST SpaceMobile up 648%, and Rocket Lab up 543%.
However, Yu doesn’t “expect them to repeat this crazy performance from 2024.” in 2025. He described last year’s recovery as a significant rebound in valuations that were “trading at very low” levels.
“These estimates, needless to say, are much richer than they were six or even three months ago,” Yu said.
