SATS surges – EchoStar shares rose nearly 11% to their best day of the year as SpaceX’s long-anticipated Nasdaq debut approached. The move tracks investor excitement around SpaceX’s IPO and EchoStar’s deep, spectrum-based exposure to the company—alongside pressure on EchoSt
Thursday ended like a spark in a crowded trading room for EchoStar (SATS). The stock closed nearly 11% higher—its best day this year—after investor enthusiasm surged ahead of a moment many traders have been watching: SpaceX’s public debut.
By the time the market screen refreshed for after-hours trading, SATS was up 5% as SpaceX moved closer to its opening bell on Nasdaq.
SpaceX’s IPO is scheduled to begin trading on Friday, after pricing its initial public offering at $135 per share. The company raised a record $75 billion by selling 555.6 million shares, valuing it at approximately $1.77 trillion.
That kind of scale doesn’t stay confined to the headline. It has been pulled into the trading logic of a separate, already-listed company—EchoStar—because investors see it as a direct, public-market way to gain exposure to SpaceX, or a proxy for the Elon Musk company.
EchoStar’s link to SpaceX traces back to a spectrum deal first announced in September 2025. Under the original agreement, EchoStar agreed to sell some of its spectrum licenses to SpaceX for approximately $17 billion. The structure was split between up to $8.5 billion in cash and up to $8.5 billion in SpaceX Class A common stock.
In November 2025, the companies amended the agreement to include additional spectrum, increasing the total consideration to roughly $19.6 billion. This time, up to approximately $11.1 billion was set to be paid in SpaceX stock, with that stock priced at $212 a share.
Barron’s estimates that EchoStar has roughly 52 million SpaceX shares.
Even as the market looks forward to Friday’s Nasdaq start for SpaceX, EchoStar’s core businesses haven’t been getting the same easy momentum. The company’s satellite and pay-TV operations continue to face headwinds.
In the first quarter of 2026, EchoStar lost around 366,000 net pay-TV subscribers, ending the period with 6.63 million total subscribers. Pay-TV revenue declined 10% year-over-year. HughesNet. its satellite broadband business. has also come under pressure from low-Earth orbit competitors such as Starlink. losing 58. 000 subscribers during the quarter.
Overall revenue fell 5.2% to $3.67 billion. Still, EchoStar narrowed its net loss to $146.9 million from $202.7 million.
What retail traders chose to focus on, though, was the ignition point tied to SpaceX.
On Stocktwits. retail sentiment around SATS shifted from bullish to extremely bullish territory over the past 24 hours. while message volume stayed at high levels. One Stocktwits user voiced optimism that the stock could open at $150 per share on Friday—an upbeat expectation that matches the broader mood building into SpaceX’s first public trade.
The picture coming into Friday is a split-screen: EchoStar’s operating businesses struggling with subscriber losses and revenue declines, and its market excitement buoyed by a spectrum-based stake in the company now set to take center stage on Nasdaq.
SATS EchoStar SpaceX IPO Nasdaq spectrum deal pay-TV subscribers HughesNet Starlink Stocktwits