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Rocket Lab ( RKLB -2.38% ) touched a 52-week high of $151 in late May. The stock trades around $74 as of this writing, about 51% off the peak. Along the way, the company sold $1.94 billion in stock to help pay for its pending purchase of Iridium Communications ( IRDM -0.86% ) .
Rocket Lab stock closed above $100 as recently as early July, though, so a return to triple digits would be a rebound, not new territory. And I think it happens. My prediction is that the stock trades above $100 again before 2029.
The gain is around 35%, or roughly 14% a year with just over two years to pull it off. What needs to go right underneath is the demanding part. Image source: Getty Images.
A $70 billion price tag Rocket Lab began August with around 598 million common shares outstanding, and September's share sale added 29.3 million more. Another 41 million or so preferred shares can convert to common stock, and Iridium shareholders will get some of their payment in Rocket Lab stock at closing, which the companies expect in mid-2027. That comes to around 700 million shares.
At $100 a share, that total puts Rocket Lab's market value near $70 billion, up from roughly $49 billion today (before any Iridium shares). And $49 billion is already pricey for a company bringing in revenue at a rate of around $1 billion a year (management expects $250 million to $265 million this quarter). In other words, the price is over 40 times sales.
A rise to $100, then, likely needs to come from revenue instead of an even higher sales multiple. Say sales roughly triple to around $3 billion by 2028 as Rocket Lab's own business keeps compounding and Iridium (around $872 million of 2025 revenue) contributes a full year. That'd put a $70 billion valuation at around 23 times sales.
Put another way, the stock could climb 35% while the sales multiple roughly halves -- if that much revenue arrives on time. Space systems does most of the work Contracted work keeps that from being pure fantasy. Rocket Lab closed June with a record $2.36 billion backlog, up 137% year over year, after starting 2026 at around $1.85 billion and finishing March at $2.2 billion.
It rose even while the company drew record revenue out of it. Around 45% of the June total is expected to become revenue within 12 months. And roughly $1.4 billion of it is in space systems (the satellite and components part of the business).
Second-quarter revenue hit a record of $234 million, up 62% year over year. Space systems made up $189.5 million of that, almost twice the year-ago number (acquisitions helped), or around 81% of the total. The deals haven't let up since.
In the second-quarter release, CEO Sir Peter Beck said the company had already entered into over $1 billion of new contracts across launch and space systems in the third quarter (including options). Neutron needs to fly -- and keep flying Launch is the smaller business now, so Neutron matters for this prediction. Launch services brought in $44.6 million of second-quarter revenue from six Electron missions, a bit less than a year ago.
Neutron, the larger reusable rocket meant to put Rocket Lab in direct competition with SpaceX , is designed to change that. The company targets bringing the rocket to its launch pad in this year's fourth quarter, but it said in its latest quarterly filing that the window for a launch by year-end is shrinking. Demand is already lining up.
Rocket Lab signed five dedicated Neutron launches in the first quarter, and the company said in August that its total launch backlog tops 90 missions. A Space Force contract worth up to $397 million covers spacecraft due to launch on Neutron. For the stock to hold $100, Neutron probably has to debut in 2027 and fly repeatedly in 2028, making launch a second growth engine.
Premium Feature Moneyball Superscore 81 /100 Today's Change ( -2.38 %) $ -1.76 Current Price $ 72.19 Granted, the growth still isn't profitable: the second-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) loss was $8.8 million, against a $27.6 million loss in the year-ago quarter. But guidance calls for the loss to rise again, to between $17 million and $23 million this quarter. Will Rocket Lab stock trade above $100 again before 2029?
I think so. After all, the market paid $151 for this growth stock in late May, and a big chunk of the revenue the price needs is already under contract. But the conditions are demanding.
The rocket hasn't flown, the deal isn't expected to close until mid-2027, and the losses haven't stopped. A prediction isn't a buy recommendation, though. Today's price around $74 already pays for years of that execution going right.
While I expect the stock to get there, I'm not buying it today.
Source: The Motley Fool
