Zacks Investment Ideas Feature Highlights: Rocket Lab, Ast Spacemobile, Intuitive Machines, Planet Labs, Lockheed Martin And L3harris

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – June 9, 2026 – Today, Zacks Investment Ideas feature highlights Rocket Lab RKLB, AST SpaceMobile ASTS, Intuitive Machines LUNR, Planet Labs PL, Lockheed Martin LMT and L3Harris LHX.

SpaceX Prepares to Make History: Space Stocks to Watch

For two decades, investing in the commercial space economy has come with an asterisk: the single most important company in the industry wasn't available to own.

That changes this week. SpaceX is targeting a Nasdaq debut on June 12^th under the ticker SPCX, with pricing expected after the close on June 11^th, an offering of roughly 557 million shares at about $135 each, aiming to raise around $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation.

That would make it the largest IPO in history by a wide margin. Whatever one thinks of the valuation, the event is a genuine milestone, and it's worth thinking carefully about what it means for the public companies that have been quietly building this industry alongside Elon Musk's juggernaut.

Here's the part that matters most for investors who can't get a meaningful allocation in the SpaceX deal itself: a listing of this magnitude gives the entire commercial space sector its first true large-cap benchmark.

Until now, public market investors have had no clean reference point for how to value a vertically integrated space business. Once SPCX is trading and analysts are publishing models, every other space stock gets repriced relative to it — and the early evidence suggests that repricing tends to run in one direction. Pure-play names have already been climbing in anticipation.

Space Stocks to Watch

The clearest beneficiary is Rocket Lab, which has matured from a scrappy small-satellite launcher into something approaching a vertically integrated space prime. Its first-quarter 2026 results were genuinely impressive: record revenue of $200.3 million, up 63.5% year over year, a record GAAP gross margin of 38.2%, and a record backlog of $2.2 billion.

The more telling shift is beneath the headline — Space Systems has now overtaken Launch Services as the larger revenue contributor, which speaks to a more diversified, higher-margin business than the "rocket company" label implies. The real catalyst ahead is Neutron, Rocket Lab's medium-lift reusable rocket targeted for a late-2026 debut, which would let the company compete for the larger payloads and constellation contracts that have historically gone to SpaceX.

The company signed its largest launch contract ever during the quarter — five dedicated Neutron missions with a confidential customer — alongside 31 new Electron and HASTE bookings. The caveat, and it's an important one, is valuation: at roughly 94 times sales, RKLB prices in a great deal of future success, and any slip in Neutron's schedule would sting.

A very different kind of bet is AST SpaceMobile, which is attempting something audacious — a space-based cellular network that connects directly to ordinary, unmodified smartphones, eliminating dead zones anywhere on Earth.

The company has assembled nearly 60 mobile network operator partners covering more than 3 billion subscribers and reaffirmed full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $150 million to $200 million. Backed by AT&T and Vodafone, with a fortified balance sheet, AST represents the "new category" thesis in its purest form: if direct-to-device connectivity works at scale, the addressable market is staggering.

The flip side is execution risk on a knife's edge — the company needs to launch dozens of its second-generation satellites this year, and every delay pushes the revenue ramp further out. It also faces the uncomfortable reality of competing with Starlink's own direct-to-cell ambitions. This is a high-conviction, high-volatility name; the stock's roughly 265% gain over the past year tells you the market is already dreaming big.

For investors who want exposure with a slightly clearer line of sight to profitability, Intuitive Machines deserves a look. The lunar lander and space-infrastructure company guided 2026 revenue of up to roughly $1 billion against a backlog approaching $1.1 billion anchored by NASA and defense contracts, and stands closest to profitability among the major pure plays.

NASA's Artemis program is creating entirely new commercial categories — lunar landers, surface communications, even lunar positioning — with a government spending pipeline that runs well into the next decade. The risk here is timing: lunar missions have a long history of slipping, and guidance tends to follow the launch cadence. Successful landings have been the right moments to lean in; slippage has been the time to step back.

There are other ways to play the theme, too. Earth-observation specialist Planet Labs has seen its remaining performance obligations surge on defense and intelligence contracts with agencies including the NRO and NATO. And for those who'd rather not pick a single winner in a field this young, the established defense primes with deep space franchises — names like Lockheed Martin and L3Harris — offer space exposure wrapped in real earnings and dividends.

Bottom Line

Of course, most of the pure-play names are not yet consistently profitable and trade at multiples that assume years of flawless execution. And they are exquisitely sensitive to sentiment — a recent Blue Origin launch failure knocked the group down sharply in a single session, a reminder that one bad headline can erase weeks of gains.

There's also a real "buy the rumor, sell the news" risk around the IPO itself; it would not be surprising to see space stocks give back some of their pre-listing enthusiasm once SPCX actually begins trading. None of this invalidates the long-term thesis, but it does argue for discipline, position sizing, and a genuine tolerance for volatility.

Still, the space economy is transitioning from a government-funded curiosity into a genuine commercial industry, and the SpaceX IPO is the clearest signal yet that public markets are ready to fund the next chapter.

For investors willing to accept the turbulence that comes with frontier industries, this week may be remembered as the moment the sector grew up — and the moment a handful of well-positioned public companies finally got the benchmark they needed to be taken seriously.

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