Daniel Sparks, The Motley Fool Fri, November 13, 2026 at 4:32 PM EST 5 min read SPCX -1.04% TSLA -2.26% NVDA -2.67% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) have moved on to haggling over price and control in their merger talks, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, Nov. 12. A deal could be announced as soon as December, the report said, but early 2027 is possible too. And it's shaping up as SpaceX taking over Tesla, with Tesla investors getting SpaceX shares. Neither company commented.
The sizes alone make this unusual. At roughly $140 a share as of this writing, SpaceX is worth about $1.9 trillion, and Tesla, near $397, is worth almost $1.6 trillion.
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So, what would a deal do to SpaceX stock? At these prices, it could nearly double SpaceX's share count and leave its shareholders owning a company whose sales come mainly from Tesla. I think the second part matters more than the first.
Buying Tesla at its market value, without a premium, takes around 11.2 billion new SpaceX shares. SpaceX had around 13.6 billion Class A and Class B shares outstanding as of Oct. 15, according to its quarterly filing, so the count could grow around 83%.
This leaves today's SpaceX shareholders with about 55% of the combined company. Tesla holders, of course, will probably want a premium. At a 25% premium, SpaceX's current owners wind up with slightly less than half.
"Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," CEO Elon Musk said about a merger on SpaceX's Oct. 20 earnings call. He added shareholders have to back it.
On SpaceX's side, the filing says any deal requires approval from its special committee, board, and controlling shareholder.
SpaceX's third-quarter revenue climbed 161% year over year to $14.6 billion, but Tesla's was flat at $28.0 billion. Put those reports together, and Tesla makes up around 66% of the combined total. Tesla's automotive revenue alone is about 48%. And the AI business SpaceX calls superintelligence shrinks from around half of SpaceX's sales to about 18% of the combined figure.
On those numbers, combined revenue rose only about 27% year over year.
Profit points the other way. SpaceX's third-quarter operating income was $2.8 billion, up from a loss the year before, while Tesla's dropped 56% to $718 million. So Tesla brings around two-thirds of the sales but only about a fifth of the operating income. The combined operating margin is about 8%, versus about 19% for SpaceX alone.
Granted, Tesla's slice of the sales has been shrinking fast. In the third quarter of 2025, Tesla's share of the two companies' combined revenue was around 83%. That stepped down to about 78% in the second quarter of 2026 and about 66% last quarter.
Plus, SpaceX management expects first-quarter 2027 revenue of $33 billion to $37 billion. If Tesla's sales hold around $28 billion a quarter, SpaceX alone could be the bigger half by early next year.
Put another way, SpaceX shareholders would arguably be giving about 45% of their faster growth to owners of a company whose sales were flat last quarter.
Ring-fencing Tesla's China business is one of the key hurdles, Bloomberg reported. It's a sensitive pairing with SpaceX, which serves government customers through Starlink and launched NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope last quarter.
And China isn't a small part of Tesla. The carmaker's third-quarter revenue there was $5.2 billion, down 8% year over year and around 19% of its total. In the combined company, China is about 12% of sales.
Until investors learn how that business is handled, it's tough to tell exactly what SpaceX shareholders might be getting for their shares.
On paper, yes. At market prices, the two companies combined are worth around $3.5 trillion, or about 20 times annualized third-quarter sales. SpaceX alone costs around 33 times its annualized sales.
But the lower sales multiple comes from adding a slower, lower-margin business, not from a cheaper valuation on SpaceX's own growth.
In the end, I think a deal at current prices could make SpaceX a much bigger company and a much slower-growing one. A premium for Tesla holders would just make the trade worse for SpaceX owners.
For SpaceX shareholders, I don't think it looks like a bargain. How much of the company they'd hand over still depends on terms neither side has announced.
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Daniel Sparks has clients with positions in Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Space Exploration Technologies and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
SpaceX Could Announce a Deal for Tesla as Soon as December. Here's What It Would Do to SpaceX Stock. was originally published by The Motley Fool
