The shares are $19.01, up 33.9% from the $14.20 at which we rated them short HOLD, medium BUY and long STRONG BUY on 4 August. That gain is not incidental to the downgrade; it is most of the reason for it. Two other things changed, and one of them is our own mistake.
analysis_status: "stopped". It stays visible on the watchlist rather than being quietly removed, and
it reactivates automatically the moment a later report produces a BUY anywhere. To be clear about what this is and is
not: it is a judgement about a price, not a verdict on the company. The previous call worked —
the stock is up a third since we made it.Intuitive Machines (Houston, Texas; founded 2013, NASDAQ-listed since February 2023 via a SPAC merger) builds, connects and operates space infrastructure for US government, national-security and commercial customers. It is the only company to have soft-landed a commercial spacecraft on the Moon twice — IM-1 in February 2024 and IM-2 in March 2025 — although both landers came to rest tipped over, cutting each mission short. Four business lines: Lunar Access Services (the Nova-C landers flown under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme), Orbital Services, Lunar Data Services (the NASA Near Space Network Services contract, under which it is building a lunar relay constellation) and Space Products & Infrastructure. The company has been transformed by acquisition: Lanteris Space Systems (the former Maxar Space Systems satellite-manufacturing business) was bought in January 2026 for roughly $851m in cash and stock, and the Goonhilly Earth Station and COMSAT ground-station networks closed on 3 August 2026. Those deals took quarterly revenue from $50m to $206m and turned a NASA-dependent mission-services company into a would-be full-stack space prime. It has never made an operating profit.
Lifecycle: high-growth, early-commercial — and now, after two acquisitions, a scale business that has never earned an operating profit. Revenue recognition here is contract-milestone based, so quarters are lumpy by construction; the right lenses are backlog, cash runway against burn, award wins and losses, dilution and mission record — not price/earnings, not free-cash-flow yield, not return on equity. Book value is negative on the measure that matters for price-to-book, so that multiple is meaningless too — but say precisely which measure, because the Up-C structure distorts this line the same way it distorts market capitalisation. The −$290.1m deficit and the −$4.22 tangible book value per share are permanent equity: they exclude $1,194.7m of redeemable non-controlling interests, which is economic ownership of the same business sitting in mezzanine equity, above the equity line. That balance is carried at redemption value and marked to the share price, which is why it rose $243.1m in H1 2026 — from $951.5m to $1,194.7m — while the business lost money. So the correct statement is not “there is no equity”; it is that permanent equity attributable to shareholders is negative while a larger economic claim is carried outside it at a mark-to-market value. We do not restate book equity as positive on that basis: a balance that rises because the share price rose is not a measure of what the business is worth.
The headline and the underlying number point opposite ways, and the report leads with that. Q2 2026 revenue of $206.2m was up 310% on Q2 2025's $50.3m. But the 10-Q attributes the increase “mostly” to the January 2026 Lanteris acquisition, which contributed $166.7m in the quarter. Strip it out and the legacy service business ran at $36.7m of service revenue in Q2 2026 against $50.3m in Q2 2025 — down 27%. The 10-Q names the causes: the NASA Near Space Network contract fell $7.3m on schedule delay and an unfavourable estimate-at-completion, OMES III fell $1.8m after NASA cancelled the OSAM task orders, the completed LTV contract fell $5.8m, and IM-4 fell $3.3m on higher estimated contract costs. So: the group is four times bigger, and the part of it that existed a year ago is smaller.
The second thing the filing shows, which our earlier reports did not surface, is that the flagship lunar franchise loses money contract by contract. The 10-Q states plainly that the IM-3 mission contract “became a loss contract in 2021” and that IM-4 “became a loss contract during the second quarter of 2025”. In the six months to 30 June 2026 the company booked a further $6.3m of losses on IM-3 and $16.2m on IM-4. These are fixed-price NASA contracts and the overruns land on Intuitive Machines.
Be precise about what is and is not deteriorating here. The combined additions on the two named contracts were $22.5m in H1 2026 against $21.2m in H1 2025 — essentially flat year on year, not a worsening trend. Underneath that, the two moved in opposite directions: IM-3's additions fell from $18.5m to $6.3m, while IM-4's rose from $2.7m to $16.2m as payload obligations grew. So the level of the drag is real and it legitimately re-scores pricing power — a company absorbing about $22m a half-year of overruns on its flagship product is not a company that can price it. But this report should not, and now does not, describe the drag as accelerating. This is not a new fact either — it is a fact our three prior reports never surfaced, and it is the single largest reason the Quality score falls.
| Sub-signal | Reading (period labelled) | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue trajectory | Q2 2026 $206.2m, +310% YoY; H1 2026 $392.9m, +248%. FY2026 guidance $900m–$1.0bn against FY2025 actual $210.0m. But organic service revenue −27% YoY in Q2 2026. | 62 |
| Profitability vs peers | Q2 2026 gross margin 17.4%; operating margin −22.9%; company-defined Adjusted EBITDA −$13.8m in Q2 2026 and −$11.1m for H1 2026. Guidance is for FY2026 Adjusted EBITDA to be positive — which needs a swing of more than $22m against the H1 run-rate in the second half. | 48 |
| Cash generation | H1 2026 free cash flow −$145.8m (operating −$111.9m, capex −$33.9m); Q2 2026 alone −$83.9m; Q2 2025 was −$27.3m and Q1 2026 −$62.0m. Not uniformly negative, and we say so: Q1 2025 was positive at about +$13.3m, and we did not re-read the Q3 or Q4 2025 statements this run. Free cash flow is heavily negative and getting more so, but the four-consecutive-quarter test is unproven on the filings we have read. | 25 |
| Balance-sheet health | Cash $367.4m (plus $11.7m restricted) against $345.0m face of 2.50% convertible notes due October 2030 — a net cash position of about $22m. Current ratio 1.66×, quick 1.51×. Against that: total shareholders' deficit of −$290.1m and $379.2m of goodwill plus $297.1m of intangibles carried from the acquisitions, giving tangible book value of −$4.22 a share (−$290.082m less $379.216m of goodwill less $297.069m of intangibles = −$966.4m, spread across all 228,924,068 economic shares). An earlier draft of this report published −$5.92, computed on the Class A weighted average — the very share-count error this report exists to correct, made in the opposite direction. | 52 |
| Backlog (the Industrials organic-demand metric) | $1,762.0m at 30 June 2026 against $213.1m at 31 December 2025. Of the $1,549m increase, $612.8m was acquired with Lanteris and $1,340m was new awards. Backlog covers about 1.85× guided FY2026 revenue. | 72 |
| Backlog quality (the caveat that matters) | Only $814.7m is firm remaining performance obligation. The $947.3m difference is mostly $587.0m booked against a multi-satellite programme on which the company has received a $45.0m authority to proceed and recorded an estimated total programme value above $600m, plus $316.0m of funded-value contracts billed as performed and $44.3m of constrained variable consideration. | 38 |
| Customer diversification | Genuinely better. Q2 2026 mix: commercial 32%, civil 37%, national security 30%. Q2 2025: civil 93%, commercial 4%, national security 3%. A NASA-dependent company has become a three-legged one in twelve months. | 72 |
| ROIC vs cost of capital | Negative. Operating loss of $47.1m in Q2 2026 on $1,887.3m of total assets. There is no return on invested capital to measure against an 11.13% discount rate. | 18 |
Two distinct competitive arenas, and they are moving in opposite directions.
| Rival | Where it competes | Share trajectory vs LUNR |
|---|---|---|
| Firefly Aerospace | NASA CLPS lunar delivery — head to head, mission for mission | Gaining, and on the dimension that matters most. Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 landed fully upright and operated a complete surface mission in March 2025. Both Intuitive Machines landings — IM-1 in February 2024 and IM-2 in March 2025 — came to rest tipped over, ending each mission early. A customer choosing a lander today has a rival with a clean record. |
| Astrobotic | CLPS lunar delivery | Weakened — Peregrine failed before reaching the Moon in January 2024 — but still an active CLPS provider bidding task orders. |
| Blue Origin | Lunar landers (Blue Moon), NASA Human Landing System | Encroaching, with a balance sheet Intuitive Machines cannot match. |
| SpaceX | Launch (supplier), Starship HLS (competitor), and now a listed comparable after its IPO | Both sides of the ledger at once: every Nova-C mission flies on a Falcon 9, so SpaceX is a concentrated supplier and the operator setting the industry's cost curve. |
| Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, Boeing | National-security space, the arena LUNR just entered with the 18-spacecraft Golden Dome AMDT3 award | Incumbents. LUNR is the challenger here, taking share from a very low base — 3% to 30% of revenue in a year. |
| Airbus Defence & Space, Thales Alenia, Rocket Lab, MDA Space | Commercial satellite manufacturing — the Lanteris business | Stable-to-competitive. Rocket Lab has bought its way into spacecraft manufacturing and MDA Space announced a $620m acquisition to enter the US defence market in June 2026. The $600m-plus three-satellite GEO award shows LUNR can win here. |
How this sets the moat sub-scores. The competitive read is the direct input, not a separate narrative. Pricing power scores 25 because the evidence is unambiguous and audited: IM-3 and IM-4 are loss contracts, with a further $22.5m of losses booked on the two of them in H1 2026 alone. A company that cannot price its flagship product above its own cost has no pricing power, and a credible rival with a cleaner landing record makes the next competition harder, not easier. Cost advantage scores 35 for the same reason, read from the cost side. Switching costs score 60 — real but bounded: NASA periods of performance run long (IM-6 to May 2031) and qualified spacecraft buses plus security clearances are genuine friction, but CLPS task orders are competed mission by mission rather than sole-sourced. Share trajectory: mixed — rising in awards and in national security, eroding in the lunar-landing franchise that gives the company its identity. Threat level: elevated.
| Dimension | Assessment | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing power | Derived from the competitive read above: fixed-price CLPS contracts where the overruns land on the company. IM-3 a loss contract since 2021, IM-4 since Q2 2025. | 25 |
| Network effects | Nascent. The build–connect–operate model plus the Goonhilly and COMSAT ground network could become a data-relay network with real pull — a lunar relay constellation gets more useful as more missions fly. Today it is a plan, not an effect. | 40 |
| Switching costs | Multi-year government periods of performance, qualified buses, clearances — but per-mission competition. | 60 |
| Cost advantage | None demonstrated; the loss contracts are the evidence against it. | 35 |
| Intangible assets | The strongest dimension. Six CLPS awards including a sixth won this quarter under the Moonbase programme; prime on NASA's Near Space Network Services; newly prime on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera and ShadowCam; precision-landing intellectual property; ITAR and clearance barriers; and, through Lanteris, heritage on more than 300 spacecraft built. | 65 |
Moat score: 45 (from 53 on 4 August). The fall is a re-derivation, not new competitive news: the loss contracts are the audited evidence that pricing power and cost advantage were scored too generously before.
| Component | Reading | Score |
|---|---|---|
| ROIC percentile vs peers (40%) | Negative operating profit against aerospace primes running 10–15% ROIC. Bottom of the sector. | 18 |
| Capital allocation (30%) | Mixed, and genuinely arguable both ways. Lanteris ($853.3m of total consideration per the 10-Q — $447.1m of net cash plus 22,991,028 Class A shares) transformed scale, mix and backlog in a single stroke, and Goonhilly plus COMSAT (£37m, half cash and half stock, plus $10.0m for COMSAT) adds ground infrastructure the missions actually need. Against that, it was paid for by issuing stock at $15–18 while the organic base shrank, and the acquired goodwill and intangibles now exceed the entire market value of the Class A float. | 42 |
| Management skin in the game (30%) | High and real: the founders hold 55,692,725 Class C shares, about 24% of total economic shares, alongside 173,231,343 Class A. Set against continuing Rule 144 dispositions through June and July 2026 and $19.3m of H1 share-based compensation. | 58 |
Composite: 0.40×18 + 0.30×42 + 0.30×58 = 37.
| Basis | Revenue / value base | Multiple |
|---|---|---|
| EV / Sales — trailing twelve months | $490.1m (Q3 2025 + Q4 2025 + Q1 2026 + Q2 2026) | 8.83× |
| EV / Sales — FY2026E (the primary multiple used) | $950m — the midpoint of company guidance of $900m–$1.0bn issued 13 August 2026 | 4.56× |
| EV / Sales — FY2026E on sell-side consensus | $935.1m (5 analysts) | 4.63× |
| EV / Sales — FY2027E | $1,150.0m consensus (4 analysts) | 3.76× |
| EV / contracted backlog | $1,762.0m at 30 June 2026 | 2.46× |
| EV / firm remaining performance obligations | $814.7m at 30 June 2026 — the part that is contractually committed | 5.31× |
| Free cash flow yield | H1 2026 FCF −$145.8m | Negative — not meaningful |
| Trailing P/E | TTM EPS −$0.94 (Class A basis) | −20.24× — not meaningful, recorded only so the currency-coherence check can run |
The anchor exists to stop the pillar importing a bubble's own baseline as “normal”. It judges the price against interest rates, disciplined growth and sector risk. We considered withdrawing it — the framework permits that for a negative-EBITDA name — and rejected the idea. A multiple does resolve here: EV/Sales on guided and contracted revenue. Withdrawing an anchor because you dislike where it points is how a report ends up flattering a price, so we have run it and followed it.
| Input | Value | Source / discipline |
|---|---|---|
| Risk-free rate | 4.63% | A declared deviation from the SKILL, not an oversight. The framework says to read the 10-year from the macro report's market_snapshot.UST10Y. That field is absent from MacroDriver-state-20260812.json altogether, so the instruction cannot be satisfied from the state file, and the macro report's prose carries a different number again — 4.70%. We therefore take 4.63% from FRED series DGS10 at 13 August 2026 and attribute it to FRED. Mitigation: 4.70% would make this name more expensive, not less — the warranted multiple falls to 1.26× and the ratio rises to 3.62× — so the deviation cannot be flattering the conclusion. |
| Equity risk premium | 4.50% | Framework constant. |
| Risk add-on | +2.00% | Beta is 1.829, above the 1.6 threshold that mandates the top add-on. |
| Discount rate r | 11.13% | 4.63 + 4.50 + 2.00. |
| g (years 1–5) | 10.0% | Consensus implies a 21.4% revenue CAGR from FY2026 to FY2030. The framework haircuts consensus by 25% (to 16.1%) and then caps at what the sector can sustain — 10% for the cyclical/normal bucket that Industrials sits in. Feeding the hype growth in is the banned move, because an optimistic g will warrant any multiple. |
| g (terminal) | 3.0% | Long-run nominal GDP cap. |
| Warranted P/E (two-stage) | 16.89× | Below the 23× Industrials guardrail, so the cap does not bind. |
| Sustainable net margin | 7.6% | The one discretionary input. Anchored to the sell-side's own FY2030 estimate — $154.0m of net income on $2,032.7m of revenue — and corroborated by the aerospace primes, which run 7–8% net. Against a Q2 2026 gross margin of 17.4%, this is a generous steady state, not a punitive one. |
| Warranted EV/Sales | 1.28× | 16.89 × 7.6%. Warranted price/sales converts to EV/sales here because net debt is about −$22m — half a percent of equity value — so the two are the same number to the second decimal. |
The obvious attack on the conclusion is that we chose the growth cap and the margin. So here is the whole grid. The question is not whether our central case says Expensive; it is whether any defensible parameterisation does not.
| Growth assumption for years 1–5 | Warranted P/E | Warranted EV/Sales at 7.6% net margin | Ratio vs actual 4.56× | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10% — the Industrials cap the framework prescribes (central case) | 16.89× | 1.28× | 3.56× | Expensive |
| 15% — the secular-growth cap, i.e. treating a space company as if it were software | 20.58× | 1.56× | 2.91× | Expensive |
| 20% — the “proven, durable >20% grower” exception, flagged as the framework requires | 24.93×, capped to 23.00× | 1.75× | 2.61× | Expensive |
Now the margin lever, run backwards. To pull the ratio down to 1.40× — merely to the edge of Expensive, not out of it — the sustainable net margin would have to be 19.3% at the prescribed growth cap, or 14.2% even at the guardrail-capped 23×. A company whose gross margin was 17.4% last quarter cannot carry a 19.3% net margin; the primes it would be competing with earn 7–8%. Neither figure is defensible.
No defensible parameterisation clears the line. Every cell in the grid is Expensive, and two of the three are above 2.0×. That is what makes this a valuation conclusion rather than a choice of assumption.
The Industrials guardrail line is a P/E of 23×: at or above it, a name is Expensive regardless of the warranted ratio. Our primary multiple is EV/Sales, not P/E, so the deterministic check skips this arm — and a skipped check is not a passed one. Adjudicating it directly: consensus puts FY2028 earnings per share at $0.329, which on the $19.01 price is 57.8×. But that consensus EPS is itself built on a stale share count — $47.0m of FY2028 net income divided by $0.329 implies about 143m shares against 228,924,068 actually outstanding. Correct the denominator and FY2028 EPS is $0.205 and the multiple is roughly 93×, four times the guardrail line, on earnings still two years away. FY2027 consensus EPS of $0.014 does not produce a meaningful multiple at all. The guardrail is breached on every honest construction of it.
| Lens | Reading | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Warranted-multiple anchor (40%) | 3.56× — deep in the Expensive band. | 8 |
| Sector median (20%) | Cuts both ways honestly. Against aerospace primes at roughly 1.5–2.5× EV/Sales, 4.56× is dear. Against listed space pure-plays it is not — that cohort trades far higher, which is exactly the “expensive-everywhere-together” problem the anchor exists to catch. | 55 |
| Own-history decile (15%) | The stock is 59% below its intraday high of $46.75, made in the week of 25 May 2026 and sits at the 29th percentile of its 52-week range ($7.78–$46.75). On its own history this is a cheap-ish decile. | 68 |
| Growth-adjusted (10%) | 4.56× EV/Sales against a 21.4% forward revenue CAGR is 0.21 on a sales-PEG basis — attractive on that lens alone. | 72 |
| Analyst consensus (15%) | $19.01 against an FMP consensus target of $31.67 (high $41, low $26) and a Yahoo mean of $29.50 (high $43, low $11, 8 analysts) — 40% below consensus, which the table would score 85–100. We cut it to 60. The same panel's earnings estimates use roughly 143m shares against 228.9m outstanding, so these targets are not independent evidence; they are contaminated by the identical share-count error we just corrected in our own work. Grades are 9 buy, 1 hold, 1 sell — 81.8% bullish — with no rating change by any firm in the last 30 days. | 60 |
Blended, the five lenses give 40.6. The anchor is supreme, so the score is held inside the Expensive band at 38 — the top of it, which is the honest place for a name where every relative lens is supportive and only the intrinsic one is not.
Intuitive Machines is a government-budget stock before it is anything else. Civil (37%) plus national-security (30%) customers were 67% of Q2 2026 revenue, and even the commercial satellite work leans on operators whose own demand is policy-shaped. The driver is US government space and missile-defence appropriations — NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services and Moonbase programmes, Artemis, the Near Space Network, and now the Space Force / Golden Dome missile-defence build-out.
| Horizon | Reading | Weight | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Historical (last 12–24 months) | Volatile but net expanding. NASA's lunar budget was squeezed through 2025 and the agency cancelled the OSAM task orders under OMES III, which cost real revenue. Since then the direction has reversed: additional lunar funding was allocated in 2026 and the Moonbase initiative created a new award stream. | 25% | 70 |
| Current state | Strong, and specific. In the last quarter the company won a sixth CLPS lander contract under the Moonbase programme, two NASA prime lunar-reconnaissance awards (the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera and ShadowCam), and — in July 2026 — an award for 18 spacecraft supporting the Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 “Golden Dome” constellation. National-security revenue went from 3% to 30% of the mix in twelve months. The offset is that the same government cancelled OSAM and let the Near Space Network contract slip. | 50% | 75 |
| Forward outlook (6–12 months) | Supportive but with a named fiscal risk. Golden Dome is a multi-year programme and Artemis/Moonbase continues. Against that, US fiscal and sovereign-debt strain is one of the macro framework's live drivers, and discretionary space budgets are exactly what gets trimmed when appropriations tighten. The 10-Q lists government shutdowns and budget-process failure among its own principal risks. | 25% | 62 |
0.25×70 + 0.50×75 + 0.25×62 = 70.5, recorded as 70 — a Tailwind (the 65–79 band), nudged up from 68 on 4 August by the Golden Dome award and the sixth CLPS win. Not commodity-leveraged, so the price-trend overlay does not apply.
Amplification role: a driver of 70 is eligible to lift a base BUY to STRONG BUY. It cannot do anything for a SELL — a SELL intensifies to STRONG SELL only when the driver is at or below 35 and economic pressure is a Headwind. Here the driver is a Tailwind and so is the economy, so the two context pillars point the opposite way from the fundamentals. The framework's rule is explicit that this disagreement is recorded as a caveat, not as an upgrade: the base signal stands unamplified. Said plainly — the wind is behind this company, and the shares are still priced past what the wind is worth. Driver confidence 65% (base 70, less 5 because the appropriations link is real but indirect).
The macro report of 12 August 2026 reads the regime as energy-shock stagflation: a supply-driven inflation impulse hitting a contracting labour market, with Fed cuts priced out and the debate live between hold and hike. Within that, Industrials (XLI) is one of the two strongest rows on the board — Outperform short, Outperform medium, Strong Outperform long — bettered only by Materials (XLB) at Outperform / Strong Outperform / Strong Outperform, so XLI is second, not first. LUNR does not appear in the macro report's watchlist_forecast, so we take the sector map, as the framework directs.
Two live qualifications. First, the 14 August prints — July retail sales −0.6% against a consensus near +0.1%, and Michigan consumer sentiment at 51.0 against 54.5 expected — post-date the macro report and mark a genuine consumer break. They are not a reason to mark this name down: Intuitive Machines sells lunar landers, satellites and ground stations to NASA, the Space Force and satellite operators, and has no consumer exposure worth naming. Second, and cutting the other way, the same fiscal strain that is driving the macro framework's US-debt driver is the mechanism by which a discretionary space budget gets cut.
Net: Tailwind, conviction 78 (from 76), stance Trend-Following — the sector's own trend is up and this name is levered to the strongest part of it. That is the case for the business. It is not a case for the price.
Source: sector map XLI (O / O / SO) — not in watchlist_forecast · Macro report 2026-08-12
This is the pillar that improved, and it improved a lot. On 4 August the score was 44 with bearish confluence; it is now 62. The Q2 print landed on the morning of 13 August and the stock rose 3.6% that session and 8.3% on 14 August — +12.2% across the two sessions — closing at $19.01 on volume of 18.9m shares, 1.8× its 20-day average.
| Component | Reading (all levels from 14 August 2026) | Weight | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-timeframe trend | Monthly and weekly uptrend, daily recovering — the close of $19.01 is back above the 50-day SMA at $18.58 but still just under the 200-day at $19.31, which is the next overhead level. Hourly strongly up; 15-minute weakening. Weighted MTF score 68, confluence Mostly Bullish. | 30% | 68 |
| Risk-reward and relative strength | Position risk is reasonable: nearest daily support at $17.91 is 0.67 ATR below, the next shelf at $16.17 is 1.72 ATR below, and ATR is $1.65 — 8.7% of the price, which is very high. Deduct for proximity to the 200-day resistance 1.6% overhead. Relative strength is genuinely split: over one month LUNR is +40.6% against SPY +4.5%, XLI +4.0% and ITA +9.8%; over three months it is −43.9% against SPY +5.0%, XLI +8.8% and ITA +16.5%. A violent bounce inside a savage downtrend. | 20% | 53 |
| Macro overlay | XLI Outperform/Outperform/Strong Outperform; Industrials carries the framework's medium macro-sensitivity weight of 0.15. | 15% | 70 |
| Sentiment | Estimate revisions are rising and the print beat. But no analyst firm has changed its rating in 30 days — the most recent action of any kind was a Roth Capital maintain on 28 May 2026 — so the grade panel (9 buy, 1 hold, 1 sell) is a stale “all-maintain” reading dressed up as conviction. FMP's own financial-health rating is C (overall score 2 of 5), with 1-of-5 on discounted cash flow, return on assets, debt/equity, price/earnings and price/book. That divergence from the analyst panel is informative and we side with the ratings snapshot. | 18% | 62 |
| Catalysts | Nothing dated inside 30 days. Q3 earnings are 12 November 2026. The IM-3 launch is imminent but carries no published date, which is its own kind of risk — an undated binary you cannot position around. | 17% | 55 |
0.30×68 + 0.20×53 + 0.15×70 + 0.18×62 + 0.17×55 = 62.0 — Improving (the ≥55 band). Timing confidence 70%: base 75, less 5 for a name whose average true range is 8.7% of its price and which has travelled $46.75 → $11.29 → $19.01 inside three months.
| Date | Event | Impact | Forecast | Previous | Relevant? | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-19 | FOMC Minutes | High | — | — | ⚠ Medium | Rate path sets the discount rate in the anchor; a pre-profit, long-duration name is among the most rate-sensitive things in the market |
| 2026-08-25 | CB Consumer Confidence (Aug) | High | — | 90.8 | ✗ No | No consumer exposure — government and satellite-operator customers |
| 2026-08-26 | Core PCE Price Index MoM (Jul) | High | 0.3% | 0.1% | ⚠ Medium | Feeds the Fed path and therefore the 10-year, which sets r |
| 2026-08-26 | Durable Goods Orders MoM (Jul) | High | 0.2% | 0.3% | ⚠ Medium | The nearest read on the Industrials capital cycle |
| 2026-09-01 | ISM Manufacturing PMI (Aug) | High | 55.0 | 55.6 | ⚠ Medium | Sector-level demand signal for XLI |
| 2026-09-04 | Non-Farm Payrolls (Aug) | High | 12k | −23k | ⚠ Medium | Labour-market read drives the hold-vs-hike debate |
| 2026-11-12 | LUNR Q3 2026 earnings | High | EPS −$0.065 · revenue $243.4m | — | ✓ Yes | The single most important scheduled event: the first test of the FY2026 Adjusted-EBITDA-positive guide |
| Date | Event | Actual | Forecast | Surprise | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-12 | CPI YoY (Jul) | 3.4% | 3.4% | In line | Neutral — no change to the rate path or to r |
| 2026-08-13 | Producer Price Index MoM (Jul) | 0.0% | 0.2% | −100% | Mildly positive — softer input costs help a fixed-price contractor absorbing overruns |
| 2026-08-14 | Retail Sales MoM (Jul) | −0.6% | +0.1% | −700% | Not applicable — no consumer exposure. Recorded so the omission is deliberate, not an oversight |
| 2026-08-14 | Michigan Consumer Sentiment (Aug) | 51.0 | 54.5 | −6.4% | Not applicable to this name for the same reason |
Nothing on the macro calendar is high-impact for this stock inside 14 days. Intuitive Machines is driven by appropriations and by its own mission calendar, not by CPI. The one indirect channel that matters is the 10-year Treasury: at 4.63% it sets the 11.13% discount rate behind the warranted multiple, and a pre-profit company whose value sits almost entirely in cash flows years away is about as rate-sensitive as an equity gets. The 14 August consumer break is recorded and explicitly set aside — this name has no consumer exposure, and the framework is clear that a weak consumer print is not a reason to mark down a business that does not sell to consumers.
| Timeframe | Trend | Direction | RSI | MACD | Key S/R | Breakout | Vol |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | Uptrend ↑ | Bullish | 48.5 | +3.73, histogram +0.15 | S: $7.78 · R: $23.32 | Resistance breakout | 0.6× |
| Weekly | Uptrend ↑ | Neutral | 48.2 | −1.17, histogram −1.64 | S: $14.54 · R: $23.32 | Resistance breakout | 1.1× |
| Daily | Recovering → | Bullish | 63.0 | −0.17, histogram +0.99 and rising | S: $17.91 / $16.17 · R: $22.50 | Resistance breakout | 1.8× |
| Hourly | Strong uptrend ↑ | Bullish | 61.4 | +0.51, histogram −0.04 | S: $18.81 · R: $19.61 | Resistance breakout | — |
| 15-minute | Weakening → | Neutral | 48.1 | +0.00, histogram −0.02 | S: $18.71 · R: $19.41 | Resistance breakout | — |
| Confluence: Mostly Bullish · MTF Score 68 | |||||||
The structure is a powerful counter-trend recovery. The daily close of $19.01 has reclaimed the 50-day SMA ($18.58) with the MACD histogram positive for ten consecutive sessions and volume at 1.8× the 20-day average — a clean technical entry trigger on its own terms. The line that has not been reclaimed is the 200-day SMA at $19.31, 1.6% overhead; until that goes, the daily chart is “recovering” rather than an uptrend, and the weekly MACD is still negative with a falling histogram. The wider context is sobering: the stock made an intraday high of $46.75 in the week of 25 May 2026 and an intraday low of $11.29 in the week of 27 July 2026, so this $19.01 is a 68% rally off the low inside a 59% drawdown from the high. Levels that matter: $19.31 (200-day) then $22.50 as resistance; $17.91 then $16.17 as support, with $14.18 — the low of the week of 10 August — below that. All dates and levels here are taken from get_technical_indicators and Yahoo weekly bars, never from Polygon aggregate labels.
126 raw unadjusted daily closes, 13 February to 14 August 2026, with the 50-day simple moving average in orange. The shape is the story: an intraday high of $46.75 in late May, an intraday low of $11.29 in the week of 27 July, and a 68% rally back to $19.01 — which has reclaimed the 50-day average at $18.58 but not yet the 200-day at $19.31. Series pulled with auto_adjust=False; the final close matches the stamped price exactly.
IM-3 lands upright and operates a full surface mission — the first clean Nova-C landing, which repairs the one thing the company is judged on. The three-satellite GEO programme converts from a $45.0m authority to proceed into funded contract value, taking soft backlog into firm remaining performance obligations. The 18-spacecraft Golden Dome award scales into a follow-on tranche. FY2026 Adjusted EBITDA turns positive as guided and FY2027 revenue runs toward the $1.31bn top of the consensus range. On that path the market pays about 6× FY2027 revenue, roughly where it pays today on a smaller number. Note what this scenario requires: near-flawless execution on a mission profile that has failed twice.
Guidance is met — FY2026 revenue lands inside $900m–$1.0bn and Adjusted EBITDA scrapes positive — and the multiple normalises anyway as the market works through what the Q2 filing actually said: organic service revenue −27% year on year, two loss-making flagship contracts, and $947.3m of backlog outside firm performance obligations. Roughly 2.9× FY2027 revenue, which is still more than double the 1.28× the anchor warrants. That gap is deliberate and worth stating: the anchor is a multi-year convergence estimate, while a twelve-month scenario is where the shares plausibly trade next. A stock does not have to reach intrinsic value inside a year, and this one probably will not.
A third consecutive landing anomaly on IM-3 — an outcome the record makes uncomfortably plausible — and the “only company to land twice” story becomes “the company that has never landed upright”, with the next CLPS competition going to Firefly. Add a missed Adjusted-EBITDA guide, which needs a swing of more than $22m in the second half against an H1 that ran −$11.1m, and the remaining $261.2m of ATM capacity gets drawn at a falling price. Cash of $367.4m is about thirteen months of the June-quarter burn rate, which is not long enough to be relaxed about a bad print. The stock breaks the $11.29 low of the week of 27 July 2026 and heads toward its 52-week low of $7.78. This is not a tail — at 30% it is the second most likely path here.
Probability-weighted: 0.25×$30.00 + 0.45×$14.50 + 0.30×$9.00 = $16.73, 12.0% below the $19.01 close. That negative expected value, on a name where the framework already reads Medium quality at an Expensive price, is the arithmetic behind a SELL at every horizon. The systemic tail the macro report carries as armed — the S&P 500 concentration / AI earnings-quality unwind, with its trigger currently receding as breadth broadens — is not inherited into the downside here: Intuitive Machines has no AI capex or monetisation leverage, is not an index heavyweight, and its non-operating items reduce rather than inflate reported earnings. Its downside is idiosyncratic and it is quite sufficient on its own.
Forecast: Fundamental: requires roughly a 63% fall to $7.00, or the fair value to rise to meet the price — which needs a demonstrated path to a mid-teens sustainable net margin. Neither is a 2026 event; unlikely inside twelve months absent a crash. Technical: already met, and the next thing to watch is the 200-day SMA at $19.31, 1.6% overhead — at the recent trajectory that is days, not weeks, though the average true range of $1.65 means a single session settles it either way. Catalyst: event-driven and not time-projectable. Two candidates: the undated IM-3 launch, and Q3 earnings on 12 November 2026. Read the ladder honestly: one path is open, so the mechanical ladder returns Half-Size. That is the builder computing a size from a group count. It is not a recommendation to open a position — the signal is SELL at all three horizons, four hard gates are triggered, and the exit action is Exit. The ladder is published because the framework publishes it, and because an open technical path on a name we rate SELL is exactly the tension a reader deserves to see rather than have smoothed away.
Forecast: The exit action is Exit, and it is worth being precise about why, because it sits oddly next to a rising share price and an unbroken stop. It is not the stop and it is not a guidance cut. It is the framework's rule that a triggered financial-distress or dilution gate is a catastrophic thesis-invalidation item in its own right. What would clear it: sustained positive free cash flow — which on the company's own guidance is a 2027-2028 event at the earliest — and an end to equity issuance, with about $261.2m of authorised ATM capacity still outstanding. Neither is likely before the 12 November 2026 print.
You would be paying 4.56× guided 2026 revenue for a company that has never earned an operating profit, whose organic revenue fell 27% year on year last quarter, and whose two flagship NASA lander contracts are audited loss contracts. Our anchor warrants 1.28×. You would be buying the strongest tape the stock has shown in three months — and the reason the tape is strong is a genuinely excellent quarter. The bet you are making is that roughly 30% compound revenue growth, a mid-teens sustainable margin and no further dilution all arrive together.
You would be selling into strength, 33.9% above where our last report rated it a medium-term Buy on 4 August, and 12.2% above where it traded before the Q2 print. You would be giving up the 25% path to $30.00 in which IM-3 lands cleanly and the GEO programme converts. The probability-weighted outcome across all three paths is $16.73, 12.0% below the current price, and the second most likely single path is the $9.00 one. Selling here banks a re-rating the framework does not think the fundamentals have earned.
No portfolio allocation or role was specified, so no position size is prescribed. Three context figures a reader should have anyway.
| Measure | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Average true range (14-day) | $1.65 — 8.7% of the $19.01 price | A single ordinary session moves this stock nearly 9%. Any sizing built on an equity-market-typical 1–2% daily range will be roughly five times too large. |
| Realised range, last three months | Intraday high $46.75 (week of 25 May 2026) to intraday low $11.29 (week of 27 July 2026) | A 76% peak-to-trough fall and a 68% rally off the low, inside one quarter. |
| Beta | 1.829 | Above the 1.6 threshold that forces the framework's maximum risk add-on, taking the discount rate to 11.13%. |
This is a satellite-sized instrument whatever the signal says. The signal says SELL.
{
"ticker": "LUNR",
"date": "2026-08-16",
"version": "v6",
"brand": "",
"analysis_status": "stopped",
"exchange": "NASDAQ",
"exchange_ticker": "NASDAQ:LUNR",
"isin": "US46125A1007",
"api_ticker": "LUNR",
"finder_ticker": "LUNR",
"finder_exchange": "NASDAQ",
"company": "Intuitive Machines, Inc.",
"currency": "USD",
"reporting_currency": "USD",
"sector": "Industrials",
"gics_sector": "Industrials",
"user_context": {
"horizon": null,
"allocation_pct": null,
"portfolio_role": null
},
"user_horizon": null,
"user_allocation_pct": null,
"portfolio_role": null,
"price_at_rating": 19.01,
"price_asof_note": "close of Friday 2026-08-14, the latest print; report dated Sunday 2026-08-16",
"signal_short": "SELL",
"signal_medium": "SELL",
"signal_long": "SELL",
"primary_signal": "SELL",
"short_entry_confirmed": true,
"composite_short": 53,
"composite_medium": 49,
"composite_long": 47,
"quality_score": 48,
"lifecycle_stage": "high-growth / early-commercial space infrastructure (Industrials, Aerospace & Defense)",
"quality_detail": {
"industry_benchmark_name": "ROIC-vs-WACC + Backlog Growth (Industrials)",
"industry_benchmark_value": "ROIC negative vs an 11.13% cost of capital; backlog $1,762.0m at 30 Jun 2026 vs $213.1m at 31 Dec 2025",
"industry_benchmark_score": 55,
"moat_score": 45,
"moat_detail": {
"pricing_power": 25,
"network_effects": 40,
"switching_costs": 60,
"cost_advantage": 35,
"intangible_assets": 65
},
"roic_percentile_vs_peers": 18,
"capital_allocation": 42,
"management_skin_in_game": 58,
"revenue_q2_2026_usd_m": 206.168,
"revenue_growth_q2_2026_yoy_pct": 309.8,
"revenue_organic_service_q2_2026_usd_m": 36.677,
"revenue_organic_service_q2_2025_usd_m": 50.313,
"revenue_organic_service_yoy_pct": -27.1,
"lanteris_contribution_q2_2026_usd_m": 166.735,
"revenue_h1_2026_usd_m": 392.898,
"guidance_fy2026_revenue_usd_m": "900-1000",
"guidance_fy2026_adj_ebitda": "positive",
"adj_ebitda_q2_2026_usd_m": -13.799,
"adj_ebitda_h1_2026_usd_m": -11.132,
"gross_margin_q2_2026_pct": 17.4,
"operating_margin_q2_2026_pct": -22.9,
"backlog_30jun2026_usd_m": 1761.95,
"backlog_31dec2025_usd_m": 213.07,
"backlog_acquired_lanteris_usd_m": 612.8,
"remaining_performance_obligations_usd_m": 814.7,
"backlog_outside_rpo_usd_m": 947.3,
"revenue_mix_q2_2026": {
"commercial_pct": 32,
"civil_pct": 37,
"national_security_pct": 30
},
"revenue_mix_q2_2025": {
"commercial_pct": 4,
"civil_pct": 93,
"national_security_pct": 3
},
"loss_contracts": "IM-3 (a loss contract since 2021) and IM-4 (since Q2 2025); a further $6.3m and $16.2m of losses booked respectively in H1 2026"
},
"cash_runway_months_cash_only": 13.1,
"cash_runway_months_after_aug_acquisitions": 11.9,
"cash_runway_months_incl_remaining_atm": 21.2,
"cash_runway_basis": "cash $367.354m at 30 Jun 2026 against Q2 2026 FCF burn of $83.867m (operating -$59.802m, capex -$24.065m); $35.0m of announced August acquisition cash (GBP18.5m, the cash half of the GBP37.0m Goonhilly consideration, at GBP/USD 1.3491 on 2026-08-14 = $25.0m, plus $10.0m for COMSAT; both subject to post-closing true-up); $261.2m of the $500.0m ATM authorisation unused (the authorisation is gross; $235.2m was raised net of $3.6m of commissions = $238.8m gross). Management asserts >=12 months' sufficiency from issuance (10-Q).",
"cash_30jun2026_usd_m": 367.354,
"fcf_h1_2026_usd_m": -145.819,
"debt_definition_used": "face value of the 2.50% convertible notes due Oct 2030 = $345.0m (carrying $336.4m); Yahoo total_debt of $455.2m is lease-inclusive and was NOT used",
"net_cash_usd_m": 22.4,
"tangible_book_per_share": -4.22,
"tangible_book_basis": "total shareholders' deficit -$290.082m less goodwill $379.216m less intangibles $297.069m = -$966.367m, over 228,924,068 economic shares. An earlier draft published -$5.92 on the Class A weighted average - the same share-count error this report exists to correct, in reverse.",
"book_value_qualification": "the -$290.082m deficit and the -$4.22 TBV/share are PERMANENT equity only; they exclude $1,194.653m of redeemable non-controlling interests carried in MEZZANINE equity at redemption value, marked to the share price (it rose $243.1m in H1 2026 from $951.536m while the business lost money). Book equity is therefore not a clean quality test in either direction for this Up-C structure, and 'positive book value' is deliberately NOT listed as a Quality-upgrade blocker. Book equity is NOT restated as positive: a balance that rises because the share price rose is not a measure of what the business is worth.",
"atm_authorised_usd_m": 500.0,
"atm_drawn_gross_usd_m": 238.8,
"atm_drawn_net_usd_m": 235.2,
"atm_remaining_usd_m": 261.2,
"lease_remeasurement_july_2026_usd_m": 109.1,
"yahoo_total_debt_gap_unexplained_usd_m": 16.8,
"gbp_usd_rate": 1.3491,
"gbp_usd_rate_asof": "2026-08-14",
"gbp_usd_rate_use": "converts the GBP18.5m cash half of the Goonhilly consideration to $25.0m in the runway calculation; no earnings figure is FX-converted (the company reports in USD)",
"shares_class_a": 173231343,
"shares_class_b": 0,
"shares_class_c": 55692725,
"shares_total_economic": 228924068,
"shares_asof": "2026-08-06 (10-Q cover page)",
"enterprise_value_usd_m": 4329.5,
"enterprise_value_basis": "228,924,068 economic shares x $19.01 = $4,351.8m equity + $345.0m convertible-note face - $367.354m cash",
"enterprise_value_yahoo_usd_m": 4583.1,
"enterprise_value_yahoo_note": "HIGHER than ours - Yahoo adds the redeemable NCI at its $1,194.7m book carrying value rather than marking Class C to market, so it does capture the Class C economics on the EV line. On the Yahoo EV the multiple is 4.82x and the ratio 3.77x - MORE expensive. The FMP $3.03bn market cap implies 159.37m shares, stale even for Class A, understating our $4,351.8m equity by ~30% (the ~24% figure an earlier draft used is the Class C share OF the economic count, a different quantity).",
"valuation_score": 38,
"valuation_detail": {
"fcf_yield": "negative - not meaningful",
"ev_sales_ttm": 8.83,
"ev_sales_fy2026e_guidance_mid": 4.56,
"ev_sales_fy2026e_consensus": 4.63,
"ev_sales_fy2027e_consensus": 3.76,
"ev_backlog": 2.46,
"ev_rpo": 5.31,
"price_vs_consensus_pct": -40,
"historical_valuation_decile": "3rd-4th decile of its own range; 29th percentile of the 52-week $7.78-$46.75 band",
"prior_report_multiple_like_for_like": 3.53,
"prior_report_multiple_as_published": 2.6,
"sensitivity_g10_ratio": 3.56,
"sensitivity_g15_ratio": 2.91,
"sensitivity_g20_ratio": 2.61,
"margin_needed_for_ratio_140_at_1689x_pct": 19.3,
"margin_needed_for_ratio_140_at_23x_pct": 14.2,
"guardrail_adjudicated_by_hand": "Industrials P/E line 23x. Share-count-corrected FY2028E P/E is ~93x (net income $47.0m / 228,924,068 shares = $0.205 EPS at $19.01). Breached on every honest construction. The automated guardrail arm does not run because the declared basis is EV/Sales, not P/E."
},
"warranted_multiple": 1.28,
"actual_multiple": 4.56,
"val_multiple_basis": "EV/Sales on FY2026E revenue (company guidance midpoint $950m). An earnings multiple does not resolve: trailing EPS is -$0.94 and FY2027E consensus EPS is $0.014. Derivation of the warranted figure is recorded separately in warranted_multiple_derivation - deliberately kept out of this field, because a basis string naming both an EV/Sales actual and an earnings multiple made the linter compare 4.56 against the 23x Industrials earnings guardrail and pass vacuously (found by the independent auditor, 2026-08-17).",
"warranted_multiple_derivation": "warranted EV/Sales 1.28x = the two-stage warranted earnings multiple of 16.89x (r 11.13%, g_near 10.0%, g_term 3.0%) multiplied by a 7.6% sustainable net margin. Price/sales converts to EV/sales here because net debt is about -$22m, ~0.5% of equity value. The 23x Industrials guardrail is adjudicated BY HAND in valuation_detail.guardrail_adjudicated_by_hand and in the report body, because the automated arm cannot run on a non-earnings basis; a skipped check is not a passed one.",
"sustainable_net_margin_pct": 7.6,
"sustainable_net_margin_source": "sell-side FY2030E net income $154.0m on revenue $2,032.7m = 7.58%; corroborated by aerospace primes at 7-8% net",
"warranted_pe_two_stage": 16.89,
"discount_rate_r": 11.13,
"risk_free_10y": 4.63,
"risk_free_source": "FRED DGS10 at 2026-08-13 (NOT the macro report, whose prose carries 4.70%; at 4.70% warranted = 1.26x and ratio = 3.62x, so the band is unchanged by it)",
"risk_addon_pct": 2.0,
"risk_addon_basis": "beta 1.829 > 1.6 forces the maximum add-on",
"g_near": 10.0,
"g_term": 3.0,
"g_near_basis": "consensus FY2026-FY2030 revenue CAGR 21.4%, haircut 25% to 16.1%, then capped at the Industrials (cyclical/normal) 10% sector-achievable line",
"warranted_ratio": 3.56,
"val_band": "expensive",
"sector_guardrail_line_pe": 23.0,
"timing_score": 62,
"timing_detail": {
"mtf_confluence": "mostly bullish",
"mtf_trend_score": 68,
"risk_reward_score": 53,
"relative_strength_vs_spy": "1-month leader (+40.6% vs SPY +4.5%), 3-month laggard (-43.9% vs SPY +5.0%)",
"relative_strength_vs_sector": "1-month +40.6% vs XLI +4.0% and ITA +9.8%; 3-month -43.9% vs XLI +8.8% and ITA +16.5%",
"catalyst_clustering_score": 55,
"sentiment_score": 62,
"macro_overlay_score": 70,
"dynamic_macro_weight": 0.15,
"atr_usd": 1.65,
"atr_pct_of_price": 8.7,
"range_position_52w_pct": 29,
"sma50": 18.58,
"sma200": 19.31,
"rsi14": 63.0,
"volume_ratio_20day": 1.8,
"post_earnings_move_24h_pct": 3.6,
"post_earnings_move_2session_pct": 12.2
},
"relative_strength_vs_spy": "1-month leader (+40.6% vs SPY +4.5%), 3-month laggard (-43.9% vs SPY +5.0%)",
"relative_strength_vs_sector": "1-month +40.6% vs XLI +4.0% and ITA +9.8%; 3-month -43.9% vs XLI +8.8% and ITA +16.5%",
"driver_score": 70,
"driver_name": "US government space & missile-defence appropriations (NASA CLPS / Moonbase / Artemis / Near Space Network + Space Force Golden Dome)",
"driver_commodity_trend": "n/a - not commodity-leveraged",
"driver_amplifies": "Amplification not applied. A SELL intensifies to STRONG SELL only when the driver is <=35 and economic pressure is a Headwind; here the driver is 70 (Tailwind) and pressure is a Tailwind, so the two context pillars disagree with the fundamentals and the SELL stands unamplified - recorded as a caveat, per the framework.",
"economic_alignment_stance": "Trend-Following",
"economic_alignment_conviction": 78,
"economic_alignment_pressure": "Tailwind",
"economic_alignment_source": "sector-map XLI (O/O/SO) - LUNR is not in the macro report's watchlist_forecast",
"macro_report_date": "2026-08-12",
"consumer_break_applicability": "not applicable - no US consumer exposure; the 14 Aug retail-sales and Michigan prints are recorded in \u00a78 and explicitly set aside",
"competitive_share_trajectory": "mixed",
"competitive_threat_level": "elevated",
"competitors_named": "Firefly Aerospace (Blue Ghost landed upright March 2025), Astrobotic, Blue Origin, SpaceX (supplier and rival), Lockheed Martin / Northrop Grumman / L3Harris / Boeing in national-security space, Airbus DS / Thales Alenia / Rocket Lab / MDA Space in satellites",
"nonop_pct_of_net_income": 25.0,
"nonop_direction": "DRAG, not inflator - Q2 2026 other income/(expense) net of -$15.697m (warrant fair value -$11.622m, contingent consideration -$0.890m, net interest -$3.007m) against a net loss of -$62.841m. There is no earnings inflation to strip; step 7b runs the other way here. The material Up-C distortion is on market capitalisation, not EPS: providers count Class A only and understate the equity by ~24%.",
"clean_pe": "n/a - loss-making, no positive earnings to clean",
"clean_peg": "n/a - loss-making",
"eps_trailing": -0.94,
"trailing_pe": -20.24,
"eps_trailing_basis": "TTM Class A basic and diluted: Q3 2025 -$0.0594, Q4 2025 -$0.34, Q1 2026 -$0.25, Q2 2026 -$0.29. Recorded so the currency-coherence check can run; a negative P/E is not a valuation multiple.",
"analyst_consensus_target": 31.67,
"analyst_target_high": 41,
"analyst_target_low": 26,
"analyst_target_median": 31,
"analyst_target_upside_pct": 67,
"analyst_targets_caveat": "the same panel's EPS estimates imply ~143m shares vs 228,924,068 outstanding, so the targets are discounted in scoring",
"analyst_grades_consensus": "Buy",
"analyst_bullish_pct": 82,
"analyst_coverage_count": 11,
"fmp_rating": "C",
"fmp_overall_score": 2,
"recent_upgrades_30d": 0,
"recent_downgrades_30d": 0,
"overall_confidence": 45,
"quality_confidence": 45,
"valuation_confidence": 60,
"timing_confidence": 70,
"fair_value_est": 7.0,
"fair_value_basis": "two constructions: warranted EV/Sales 1.28x on $950m FY2026E revenue gives $5.41; warranted P/E 16.89x on FY2030E net income of $154.0m across 228,924,068 shares, discounted 4.4 years at 11.13%, gives $7.14. We publish the more generous of the two.",
"stop_loss": 13.9,
"target_price": 14.5,
"stop_loss_basis": "set deliberately BELOW the $14.50 modal base path, under the $14.18 low of the week of 2026-08-10, 3.1 ATR below spot. An earlier draft published $15.80, which this report's own 45%-probability scenario would have triggered - the stop and the central case contradicted each other. The $16.17 shelf is the first warning level.",
"scenario_base_target": 14.5,
"scenario_bull_target": 30.0,
"scenario_bear_target": 9.0,
"scenario_probabilities": {
"bull_pct": 25,
"base_pct": 45,
"bear_pct": 30
},
"scenario_weighted_target": 16.73,
"scenario_weighted_vs_price_pct": -12.0,
"systemic_tail_inherited": false,
"systemic_tail_note": "the armed S&P 500 concentration / AI earnings-quality unwind is NOT inherited: no AI capex or monetisation leverage, not an index heavyweight, and non-operating items reduce rather than inflate reported earnings. Its trigger is also receding as breadth broadens.",
"entry_groups_met": 1,
"entry_conviction": "Half-Size",
"entry_group_open": "Technical (was Fundamental on 4 August)",
"entry_ladder_note": "the Half-Size badge is the builder's mechanical output from one met entry group. It is NOT an entry recommendation: the signal is SELL at all three horizons, four hard gates are triggered (1, 3, 4 and 5) and the exit action is Exit.",
"exit_groups_live": 1,
"exit_action": "Exit",
"exit_action_basis": "Thesis Invalidation is live on its catastrophic arm - a triggered hard gate fires the group alone. Gates 1 and 4 are triggered. No stop-loss has been hit and no guidance has been cut.",
"hard_gate_state": "caution",
"gates_triggered": [
"Gate 1 - Financial Distress: TRIGGERED on the interest-coverage arm ALONE. TTM operating income -$134.851m / interest expense $13.447m = -10.03x, against a +1.5x threshold. The four-consecutive-quarters-of-negative-FCF arm is NOT relied upon: Q1 2025 FCF was POSITIVE at about +$13.3m (H1 2025 -$14.020m less Q2 2025 -$27.317m) and the Q3/Q4 2025 cash-flow statements were not re-read this run, so that arm is unproven. Verified negative quarters: Q2 2025 -$27.3m, Q1 2026 -$62.0m, Q2 2026 -$83.9m. Classic distress markers absent (net cash ~$22m, current ratio 1.66x, no near-term maturity, no going-concern language).",
"Gate 3 - Valuation Ceiling: Expensive band, actual EV/Sales 4.56x vs warranted 1.28x = 3.56x, against a 1.40x threshold. No growth exception. Cross-check on the Yahoo EV construction: 4.82x / 3.77x, more expensive still.",
"Gate 4 - Accounting/Dilution: two-year test met on weighted-average Class A shares 55,093,365 (Q2 2024) -> 117,434,775 (Q2 2025) -> 162,172,470 (Q2 2026). Balance-sheet check: Class A OUTSTANDING 121,281,880 (31 Dec 2025) -> 169,529,749 (30 Jun 2026) = +39.8% in six months; ISSUED 123,472,960 -> 171,720,829 = +39.1% (2,191,080 treasury shares held flat across both dates). 8,259,379 shares sold via a new $500.0m ATM in Q2 2026 for $235.2m net of $3.6m commissions, plus an 11,574,069-share placement at $15.12 in February, 22,991,028 shares for Lanteris and 960,649 for Goonhilly in August. SBC at 4.9% of H1 2026 revenue is NOT the trigger.",
"Gate 5 - Binary Event: TRIGGERED. The third limb (a genuinely binary outcome that would move the stock >20%) carries NO timing qualifier, unlike Gate 2 with its explicit 14-day window. IM-3 is confirmed by primary sources as the next launch and confirmed unflown; a landing after two consecutive tip-overs is binary and would move the stock >20%. Having applied strict literalism to Gates 1 and 4, we do not read a timing window into Gate 5 that is not written there. No dated launch window is public (NASA CLPS page updated 2026-07-31 gives only 2026) - recorded as a confirmed absence, not an assumption. Caps at HOLD; no signal effect, since the matrix already read SELL."
],
"gates_caution": [
"Do-Not-Buy Trigger 4 - insider selling: could not be established from Form 4 / Rule 144 metadata (Form 4 filings 1, 15 and 29 Jul and 12 Aug 2026; Rule 144 notices 8, 18 and 29 Jun 2026). Not fired; carried as an unresolved monitoring item, not a pass."
],
"do_not_buy_triggers": [],
"dnb_adjudication": "RULING: Trigger 2(a) is ruled OUT. The numeric arm IS met (3.56x against a 2.0x threshold), so the ruling rests entirely on the no-exceptional-proven-durable-growth carve-out, and we rule that the carve-out APPLIES. Reasons, in order: (1) the growth is exceptional and delivered rather than promised - revenue +310% YoY, backlog $1.76bn at ~1.85x guided FY2026 revenue, $920m of Q2 awards plus $300m in Q3 to date, a sixth CLPS award, national security 3% -> 30% of mix; (2) internal consistency with the framework - Gate 3 own pre-profit arm is written as EV/Revenue > 20x for a NON-hypergrowth company, and this name is at 4.56x forward on growth of that order, so the framework own hypergrowth allowance points the same way; (3) the remaining-performance-obligation schedule gives contractual revenue visibility into 2027 and beyond, which supports durable. Firing 2(a) would output a hard DO NOT BUY on a company whose revenue quadrupled, which the carve-out exists to prevent. The durability caveat is carried as a MONITORING ITEM, not as a qualification of the ruling: $947.3m of backlog sits outside firm RPO and much of the growth was acquired; if either deteriorates, 2(a) is re-adjudicated. Trigger 2(b) requires a live de-rating catalyst - no AI-cohort membership (no AI capex or monetisation leverage, not an index heavyweight, non-operating items a drag not an inflator) and no structural business-model threat identified - so it does not fire. Triggers 1, 3 and 5 do not fire; Trigger 4 is unresolved and monitored.",
"framework_amendment_proposed": "Gate 1's interest-coverage arm (<1.5×) and its four-quarters-of-negative-free-cash-flow arm both fire mechanically on ANY pre-profit company, and Gate 4's dilution arm fires on any company funding growth with equity — which is the normal and appropriate financing structure for early-commercial capital-intensive names. On LUNR both fire while the classic distress markers are absent: a small net cash position, a current ratio of 1.66×, no near-term maturity and no going-concern language. We let Gates 1 and 4 fire, because this SKILL writes exemptions where it wants them (Gate 3 and Do-Not-Buy Trigger 2 both carry a spelled-out pending-takeover carve-out), so an absent carve-out is not an invitation to invent one. PROPOSED AMENDMENT, for the framework owner rather than for this report: (a) add a pre-profit qualifier to Gate 1's interest-coverage arm that reads months-of-runway against burn instead, with a threshold near 12 months; (b) make Gate 4's dilution arm test dilution per unit of revenue or backlog growth rather than raw share count, so accretive equity funding is distinguished from value-destroying issuance; (c) state explicitly whether a mechanically-fired distress gate should also fire the catastrophic Thesis-Invalidation exit item, since on this name that single linkage is what turns exit_action from Hold to Exit; (d) specify how the warranted-multiple anchor should be instantiated for a pre-profit name, because warranted EV/Sales = warranted P/E × sustainable net margin is a construction we have had to derive rather than read off. This is the same amendment raised on MNO.TO this run. CLAUSE (e), added after the independent audit: Gate 5 carries NO timing qualifier while Gate 2 carries an explicit 14-day window. On this name that asymmetry decided whether an imminent-but-undated binary mission fired the gate or merely cautioned it. We resolved it by firing the gate - literalism, consistent with our treatment of Gates 1 and 4 - but the framework should state explicitly whether Gate 5 has a scheduling window and, if so, what it is.",
"post_audit_fixes_round1": "Audit sustained the SELL x3, all four triggered gates and the DNB 2(a) ruling; no blocker. Seven MAJOR fixes, none of which changed a score or a signal: TBV/share -5.92 -> -4.22 on the economic share count; book-value claims qualified for the $1,194.653m mezzanine redeemable NCI; the loss-contract deterioration framing withdrawn (combined additions $22.5m H1 2026 vs $21.2m H1 2025 - flat; IM-3 fell 18.5 -> 6.3, IM-4 rose 2.7 -> 16.2); Gate 1 four-quarter FCF arm DELETED (Q1 2025 FCF was +$13.3m), leaving interest coverage to carry the gate alone; Gate 4 issued-vs-outstanding corrected (+39.8% outstanding, not +43%); the provider-EV claim reconciled (Yahoo EV $4,583.1m is ABOVE ours and implies 4.82x / 3.77x, more expensive; understatement ~30% not ~24%); Gate 5 now FIRES on its literal text, which carries no timing window, removing an interpretive asymmetry against Gates 1 and 4 - the point is added to framework_amendment_proposed as clause (e). Nine MINOR fixes including stop_loss 15.80 -> 13.90 (it sat above the 45%-probability modal path), ATM remaining 264.8 -> 261.2, the $109.1m July lease remeasurement disclosed, the ~$16.8m Yahoo debt gap flagged unexplained, the 24-May intraday-high date aligned to the week of 25 May, XLB (O/SO/SO) acknowledged as the strongest sector row rather than XLI, Lanteris consideration $853.3m, and the FRED-vs-macro risk-free deviation declared (market_snapshot is absent from the 12 Aug state file altogether; 4.70% would make the name MORE expensive).",
"delta_vs_prior": "Signals flip to SELL at all three horizons, from HOLD / BUY / STRONG_BUY on 4 August, and analysis_status moves from donatien-pick to stopped because no horizon now carries a BUY. The valuation score fell 72 -> 38: the 4 August calibration recorded the warranted-multiple anchor as 'na' while asserting an 'attractive' band, and it computed EV/Sales on a Class-A-only enterprise value; correcting the share count to all 228,924,068 economic shares and running the anchor properly gives 4.56x actual against 1.28x warranted, a ratio of 3.56x, which is Expensive and fires Gate 3. The quality score fell 60 -> 48, driven by the Q2 2026 filing's disclosure that organic service revenue declined 27% year on year, and by the moat score falling 53 -> 45 once the audited loss-contract status of IM-3 and IM-4 is reflected in pricing power and cost advantage; the industry benchmark score fell 58 -> 55. The timing score rose 44 -> 62 on the post-print breakout. The driver score rose 68 -> 70 on the Golden Dome AMDT3 award and a sixth CLPS win. Gates 1, 3, 4 and 5 are all newly triggered - the 4 August calibration had an empty gates_triggered array and carried the IM-3 mission as a caution. Because only distress and dilution are on the catastrophic Thesis-Invalidation list, Gates 1 and 4 are what move exit_action from Hold to Exit. short_entry_confirmed moves from false to true, because the Technical entry group is now met. entry_groups_met is 1 for a second consecutive run and entry_conviction is Half-Size for a second consecutive run, but the open path swapped from Fundamental to Technical: the price is no longer below our fair value, and the tape has turned. Price +33.9% since 4 August, which is itself most of the reason the signal changed.",
"next_update_date": "2026-08-30",
"next_update_basis": "default +14d from the 2026-08-16 run date - no dated catalyst inside the window; the IM-3 launch is imminent but undated, so it is re-checked each cycle. Q3 earnings 2026-11-12.",
"next_check_date": "2026-08-30"
}
Every score, level and gate above, machine-readable, so the next run computes deltas against it rather than against memory. Note in particular the corrected share count, the recorded warranted multiple where three prior runs recorded 'na', and the framework_amendment_proposed note on Gates 1 and 4.
market_snapshot.UST10Y. That key is absent from MacroDriver-state-20260812.json entirely (verified this run), so the instruction cannot be satisfied from the state file, and the macro report's prose carries 4.70% rather than the 4.63% used across this batch. We use 4.63% from FRED series DGS10 at 13 August 2026 and attribute it to FRED. Mitigation: 4.70% moves the warranted multiple to 1.26× and the ratio to 3.62× — more expensive — so the deviation cannot be doing the conclusion any favours.warranted_multiple: "na" and warranted_ratio: "na" while simultaneously asserting val_band: "attractive" — a band with no anchor behind it — and computed EV/Sales on a Class-A-only enterprise value. Both are fixed here, and the fix is most of the 34-point fall in the Valuation score. (2) Surfaced a material fact three prior reports missed: IM-3 and IM-4 are audited loss contracts, with $22.5m of further losses booked on them in H1 2026. That is the largest single input to the Quality and moat downgrades. (3) The uncomfortable tension we have not smoothed away: the conviction ladder returns Half-Size on a met Technical entry group while the signal is SELL at all three horizons and the exit action is Exit. Both are correct outputs of their own rules; §12 says so explicitly rather than hiding one of them. (4) Cash runway is the number that matters most here and it is stated three ways rather than blended: about 13 months on the 30 June cash of $367.4m at the June-quarter free-cash-flow burn of $83.9m; about 12 months after the $35.0m of announced August acquisition cash (£18.5m — the cash half of the £37.0m Goonhilly consideration — at GBP/USD 1.3491 on 14 August 2026 = $25.0m, plus $10.0m for COMSAT; both subject to post-closing true-up); and about 21 months if the $261.2m of remaining ATM capacity is drawn — which is dilution, not free cash. Management's own assertion in the 10-Q is sufficiency for at least twelve months from issuance. The falsifiable tension: H1 Adjusted EBITDA was −$11.1m against a full-year guide of positive, so the second half needs a swing of more than $22m. (5) The absence of a dated IM-3 launch window is confirmed, not assumed — three sources named above. Gate 5 fires regardless, on a third limb that carries no timing qualifier. (6) Unresolved: the insider-selling test could not be settled from Form 4 metadata alone. val_multiple_basis mentioned the warranted earnings multiple in its derivation, the guardrail arm matched on that substring, and it then compared our EV/Sales of 4.56 against the 23× Industrials earnings line and passed. The derivation now lives in a separate calibration field so that arm skips honestly and we adjudicate the 23× line by hand instead. Second, the check that should have caught our three prior calibrations — a real band asserted over an uncomputed anchor — was gated on the inverse condition and returned zero errors against all three files.