After SpaceX, Amazon Could Be The Next Best Space Stock

Key Points

• Investor attention is flooding into all things space thanks to the SpaceX IPO, and Amazon's Project Leo is starting to look like one of the most overlooked plays out there.
• The FCC has just waived a critical deadline for Amazon's satellite constellation, removing a near-term overhang and acknowledging the long-term value of what Amazon is building.
• With the stock back below $250, the SpaceX IPO buzz could end up shining a long-overdue spotlight on Amazon's own ambitions.

Shares of Amazon.com Inc NASDAQ: AMZN are trading under $250 this week, down from nearly $275 at the end of last month.

The stock has been buffeted by a combination of AI CapEx concerns, a high-profile rocket explosion, and a broader risk-off mood that's weighed on even the strongest names in tech. It's been a frustrating sell-off given the recent all-time highs the stock had been printing.

But some recent developments deserve more attention than they've been getting. With SpaceX having IPO'd, the entire investment world is fixated on space, and few companies have a more compelling and more overlooked space story than Amazon.

Add in a fresh regulatory tailwind, and the setup starts to look more interesting than the price action would suggest.

The SpaceX IPO Is Changing the Conversation

Last week saw SpaceX deliver the largest IPO in history, and the wave of investor interest it's generated has reignited enthusiasm for anything connected to commercial space. But with SpaceX having gone public at a sky-high valuation, many investors are now scrambling to find the next-best thing. That hunt is starting to look a lot like the early days of the AI rally, with money chasing any name that has a credible claim to the theme.

This is where Amazon's positioning, beyond its much-discussed e-commerce and cloud computing arms, suddenly becomes a lot more interesting. The company has been quietly building one of the only credible challengers to SpaceX, and to Starlink in particular, through a project called Amazon Leo. It's the company's low-Earth-orbit satellite broadband network, designed to deliver high-speed internet anywhere in the world, and it's emerged as the most realistic alternative to Starlink's network.

That matters because Starlink already serves more than 12 million paying customers and generates revenue at a scale most investors don't fully appreciate. It's exactly the kind of business Amazon is gunning for, with a multi-billion dollar war chest and the full might of its retail and logistics ecosystem behind it.

A Big Regulatory Win That Few Are Talking About

Making Amazon's space play all the more interesting right now is that while SpaceX dominated last week's headlines, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) quietly delivered a significant win for Amazon Leo.

The regulator waived a looming July deadline that would have required Amazon to launch half of its planned constellation by the end of the month. Amazon was nowhere near that figure, and the waiver removes what could have been a serious overhang on the project's authorization.

More importantly, the FCC's reasoning is worth reading carefully. The regulator described Amazon Leo's service as "groundbreaking" in both quality and affordability, and explicitly cited the company's multi-billion-dollar investment and the public interest in supporting a credible competitor to Starlink. That's an unusually strong endorsement from a federal regulator, and it adds significant credibility to the project's prospects.

The Launch Trajectory Is Gathering Momentum

The other piece of the puzzle worth understanding is that Amazon's launch operations are also beginning to find their feet. The company has had a notoriously difficult time getting satellites into orbit at scale, hampered by delays at Blue Origin's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan, as we covered after the recent New Glenn explosion.

But the broader picture is more constructive than the headlines suggest. Amazon Leo's number of deployed satellites recently surpassed 300 for the first time, which is still just a fraction of the eventual 3,232 it wants to get up there.

To make this happen, earlier this year the company committed to doubling its annual launch rate, and its recent acquisition of Globalstar has further bolstered its scalability.

Why This Matters for the Stock

For investors weighing up Amazon at current levels, the SpaceX IPO spotlight is a reminder that Project Leo is one of several major growth stories sitting inside Amazon that the market might have been overlooking. So much of the talk in recent quarters has been about AWS revenue and AI infrastructure. Still, there's now a credible satellite broadband business starting to scale, which could eventually generate billions in recurring revenue. All while the stock trades at one of its lowest valuations in years.

The bears will rightly point out that Leo is still years away from being a meaningful financial contributor, and the launch delays are real. But for those who couldn't get involved in the SpaceX IPO, or who didn't want to, but still want exposure to the broader space theme, Amazon at $250 isn't a bad option.