UmbriaExplore our travel guides. Share your stories, tips and questions on Reddit.
Fast movers • Alerts • Momentum
10% OFF with SAVE10
Charts • Watchlists • Multi-broker tools
Built for active traders
Biotech catalyst, news and analysis PDUFA tracker
Biotech catalyst, news and analysis PDUFA tracker
Revenue of $206.2 million in the quarter to June 30, 2026 against $50.3 million a year earlier, with product revenue of $166.7 million as Lanteris enters the accounts, a gross profit of $35.9 million, an operating loss of $47.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of negative $13.8 million. Cash was $367.4 million, backlog $1.76 billion, the company guides to $900 million to $1 billion of 2026 revenue, and the ground network grew in August with Goonhilly and COMSAT.
Get every Merlintrader report in real time on Telegram: join @merlintraderpub_com.
The company reports on the calendar year and reported the second quarter on August 13, which points to early November for the third. The three things to read are revenue against the $206.2 million of this quarter and against the $900 million to $1 billion of the full-year outlook, the gross margin against the 17.4% this quarter computes, and the cash, which fell from $582.6 million at December 31 to $367.4 million at June 30 even though $413.8 million was raised from issuing securities in the half.
Operating expenses of $253,304 thousand in the quarter exceeded revenue of $206,168 thousand, with total cost of revenues at $170,302 thousand and general and administrative expense at $60,346 thousand, and the loss from operations was $47,136 thousand against $28,640 thousand a year earlier. The half-year operating loss was $86,337 thousand and free cash flow was negative $145,819 thousand. Cash and cash equivalents fell to $367,354 thousand from $582,606 thousand at December 31, 2025, against $413,772 thousand raised from issuing securities and $447,062 thousand paid for acquisitions.
All financial statement figures on this page come from the Form 10-Q filed on August 13, 2026 for the quarter and six months ended June 30, 2026, in thousands of dollars, and from the results release furnished the same day as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K for the outlook, the awards and the non-GAAP measures. The reference price of $15.72 is the Nasdaq close of September 21, 2026 from the project’s market-data provider, and the market value of about $3.60 billion is a Merlintrader calculation from that close and the 228,924,068 Class A and Class C shares the filing’s cover page declares as of August 6, 2026; on the Class A count alone it is about $2.72 billion, and neither is the weighted-average share count of any quarter. The gross profit of $35.9 million and the gross margin of 17.4% are Merlintrader calculations from the filing’s revenue and total cost of revenues, which the filing presents by category rather than as a gross profit line. The backlog of $1,761,950 thousand, the convertible notes and the share counts are figures the company declares. Provider fields for float, short interest, ownership, analyst aggregates and employees are dated readings and are not company figures.
The quarter is the first in which Intuitive Machines is a spacecraft manufacturer as much as a lunar company. Revenue of $206.2 million was more than four times the $50.3 million of a year earlier, and $166.7 million of it is product revenue, a line that did not exist a year ago and that arrives with Lanteris, the former Maxar Space Systems bought on January 13, 2026. Backlog went from $213.1 million at December 31, 2025 to $1,761.9 million, of which $612.8 million was acquired with Lanteris and $1.34 billion is new awards, and in July the company was selected by L3Harris to build eighteen IM 300 spacecraft platforms for the Space Development Agency’s missile-defence tranche. It signed the sixth NASA lunar payload contract, closed Goonhilly and COMSAT to own the ground segment, and holds $367.4 million of cash against a convertible note that does not mature until 2030. The company also carries an at-the-market programme and a February share sale as the two ways it has funded the build.
The revenue and the cost arrived together, and the cost arrived first. Total cost of revenues of $170.3 million on $206.2 million of revenue leaves a gross profit of $35.9 million, 17.4% of revenue, against operating expenses of $83.0 million excluding the cost of revenues, so the loss from operations was $47.1 million against $28.6 million a year earlier and the half-year operating loss was $86.3 million. General and administrative expense alone rose to $60.3 million from $15.6 million. The balance sheet shows why the quarter was possible and what it cost: intangible assets went from $13.0 million to $297.1 million and goodwill from $18.7 million to $379.2 million, $447.1 million of cash went out for acquisitions in the half, and cash fell to $367.4 million from $582.6 million, with $413.8 million raised from issuing securities in the same half. Two of the lunar contracts are loss contracts: IM-3, which has been one since 2021, took a further $6.3 million of estimated losses in the half, and IM-4, which became one in the second quarter of 2025, a further $16.2 million. The company also carries a Department of Justice civil investigation into its Lanteris subsidiary’s cybersecurity compliance, with an indemnity from the seller, and a Delaware action by Starlight Strategies IV LLC over a preferred-stock conversion.
The Form 10-Q filed on August 13, 2026 carries the unaudited condensed consolidated accounts for the three and six months ended June 30, 2026, in thousands of dollars. Revenue was $206,168 against $50,313 in the quarter and $392,898 against $112,837 in the half, split into product revenue of $166,735 against nil, service revenue of $36,677 against $50,313 and grant revenue of $2,756 against nil. Total cost of revenues was $170,302 against $62,156, so the gross result moved from a loss of $11,843 to a profit of $35,866. Operating expenses were $14,927 of depreciation and amortisation against $752, $7,729 of research and development against $461 and $60,346 of general and administrative expense against $15,584, for $253,304 in total against $78,953 and a loss from operations of $47,136 against $28,640. Other income and expense was a net expense of $15,697 against $9,566, made of interest income of $1,476, interest expense of $4,483, a $11,622 charge from the change in the fair value of the warrant liabilities, an $890 charge from the change in the fair value of contingent consideration and $178 of other expense, so the loss before income taxes was $62,833 against $38,206 and the net loss was $62,841 against $38,206. Of that net loss, $16,781 was attributable to the redeemable noncontrolling interest, $385 of net income was attributable to the noncontrolling interest, leaving a net loss attributable to the company of $46,445 and, after $167 of preferred dividends, a net loss attributable to Class A shareholders of $46,612, or $0.29 a share on 162,172,470 weighted-average shares against $0.22 on 117,434,775. The balance sheet at June 30, 2026 shows cash and cash equivalents of $367,354 against $582,606 at December 31, 2025, restricted cash of $11,668, trade and other receivables of $119,670 against $12,193, contract assets of $50,992, inventory of $59,941 and advances to suppliers of $32,558 against $3,353, for total current assets of $662,820 against $618,814, plus orbital receivables of $209,833 outside current assets, property and equipment of $264,626, intangible assets of $297,069 against $12,968, goodwill of $379,216 against $18,697 and total assets of $1,887,281 against $757,154. Liabilities include accounts payable and accrued expenses of $64,603, contract liabilities of $215,518 current, for total current liabilities of $399,831, long-term debt of $336,352 against $335,335, warrant liabilities of $81,438 against $60,394 and total liabilities of $975,765 against $553,452. Mezzanine equity carries 5,000 shares of Series A preferred stock subject to possible redemption at $6,945 and redeemable noncontrolling interests of $1,194,653 against $951,536, and shareholders’ equity is a deficit of $290,082. The cover page of the same filing states 173,231,343 shares of Class A common stock, no Class B and 55,692,725 shares of Class C common stock outstanding as of August 6, 2026.
Intuitive Machines builds spacecraft, connects them and operates the infrastructure, and the second quarter of 2026 is the one in which the arithmetic of that sentence changed: revenue of $206.2 million against $50.3 million, $166.7 million of it product revenue from building spacecraft rather than services, and backlog of $1.762 billion against $213.1 million at the start of the year. It is also the quarter in which the company spent to get there: $447.1 million on acquisitions, an operating loss of $47.1 million, a free cash outflow of $83.9 million in the quarter and a further $235.2 million raised under an at-the-market programme. The question the filings answer quarter by quarter is whether the gross profit on the spacecraft line grows faster than the organisation built around it, and whether the awards announced as bookings turn into the backlog and then into the revenue the 2026 outlook of $900 million to $1 billion requires.
The company completed the in-orbit commissioning of the SXM-11 satellite and handed it over to SiriusXM. It is a geostationary communications satellite built on the IM 1300 series platform and launched by SpaceX on a Falcon 9 on June 28, 2026; the company says it has built 13 spacecraft with SiriusXM.
The company announced an order for two IM 300 spacecraft platforms from a customer the release does not name, which widens the customer base of the platform.
Revenue of $206.2 million against $50.3 million a year earlier, with product revenue of $166.7 million, a gross profit of $35.9 million, an operating loss of $47.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of negative $13.8 million. Cash of $367.4 million at June 30 and backlog of $1.762 billion against $213.1 million at December 31, 2025. The company guided to $900 million to $1 billion of 2026 revenue and to a positive adjusted EBITDA for the year.
The company completed the acquisition of Goonhilly Earth Station Limited in the United Kingdom for GBP 37,000,000, split equally between cash and 960,649 shares of Class A common stock, and the acquisition of COMSAT LLC for a base cash purchase price of $10.0 million. Both are deep space communications providers, and the company says it will use the network for the IM-3 and Altus-1 missions.
The company was selected by L3Harris Technologies to support the Space Development Agency’s Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 mission, building and delivering eighteen spacecraft platforms on the IM 300 platform for hypersonic and ballistic missile tracking. The results release describes it as an award in July to support the Golden Dome constellation.
The company signed its sixth NASA lunar payload contract, which the filing calls the IM-5 mission, awarded in June 2026, with a base-period value of $68.6 million, a customer option period worth $79.7 million and a performance incentive of up to $15.0 million. The option had not been exercised at June 30, 2026, and the base period runs through August 2027. The fifth contract by award date is IM-6, awarded in March 2026, with $160.1 million of estimated revenue.
On February 27, 2026 the company issued 11,574,069 shares of Class A common stock at $15.12 for an aggregate purchase price of $175.0 million, with $7.5 million of related transaction costs. On June 2, 2026 it entered a sales agreement for an at-the-market programme of up to $500.0 million, filed as an exhibit to a Form 8-K on June 3 under a registration statement on Form S-3 that became effective on June 2; in the second quarter it issued 8,259,379 shares for $234.6 million and raised about $235.2 million of net proceeds.
The company acquired all of the membership interests of Lanteris Space Holdings LLC, previously Maxar Space Systems, a spacecraft manufacturer serving national security, civil and commercial customers, from Advent International. The aggregate consideration was $853.3 million: $405.6 million of cash, $43.7 million of transaction bonuses and 22,991,028 shares of Class A common stock valued at $404.0 million at the $17.57 closing price on the acquisition date.
The constructive case is that the company has changed category and the order book proves it. Revenue of $206.2 million against $50.3 million is a fourfold increase, and $166.7 million of it is product revenue, which is the line a spacecraft manufacturer books and which did not exist a year earlier. Backlog of $1,761.9 million against $213.1 million at December 31 includes $612.8 million acquired with Lanteris and $1.34 billion of new awards, the company added eighteen IM 300 platforms for a missile-defence tranche in July, and it now owns the ground segment as well as the spacecraft, with Goonhilly and COMSAT closed in August. Against that it holds $367.4 million of cash, the $345.0 million convertible note does not mature until October 2030, and the at-the-market programme gives it a way to fund a build without a single large raise.
The case against accepts the growth and prices the cost of it. Cost of revenues of $170.3 million leaves a gross margin of 17.4%, and the $83.0 million of operating expense that sits above the cost of revenues is more than double that gross profit, which is why the operating loss was $47.1 million in the quarter and $86.3 million in the half. General and administrative expense rose to $60.3 million from $15.6 million as the organisation absorbed Lanteris, goodwill reached $379.2 million and intangibles $297.1 million, and cash fell to $367.4 million from $582.6 million even though $413.8 million was raised from issuing securities in the same half. Two lunar missions are loss contracts and each revision of their cost estimates has added to the loss, and the company carries a Department of Justice civil investigation into Lanteris’ cybersecurity compliance with an indemnity from the seller rather than an accrual. The two cases agree on the revenue, the backlog and the cash; they disagree on whether a 17.4% gross margin on spacecraft is the start of a curve or the price of the first units.
The constructive path needs the gross margin to widen as the Lanteris work moves from integration into production and as the communications satellites for the NASA Near Space Network reach service. On that path the $1.76 billion of backlog converts on schedule, the 2026 outlook of $900 million to $1 billion is met without another large financing, and adjusted EBITDA turns positive for the year as the company guides. What would confirm it: two consecutive quarters in which the gross profit grows by more than the operating expense does, and a backlog figure that grows by performance rather than by acquisition.
The middle path is the one the current numbers describe. Revenue keeps compounding from the $206.2 million of the quarter toward the low end of the outlook, the operating loss stays in the neighbourhood of $40 million to $60 million a quarter, and the gap is funded from the $367.4 million of cash, the at-the-market programme and whatever the next capital-market window allows. That path needs nothing to go wrong and still leaves the share count exposed to the price at which the next shares are sold, which in the second quarter was through an at-the-market programme at prices the market set.
The adverse path starts with the two loss contracts and with the spacecraft schedule. The IM-3 and IM-4 missions have been revised upward repeatedly, a mission that slips a quarter moves its revenue with it, and the lunar payload contracts are milestone businesses. If the gross margin stays where it is while general and administrative expense stays where it is, the operating loss is a run rate rather than a stage, and the free cash outflow of $83.9 million in a single quarter becomes the measure to watch against $367.4 million of cash. What would falsify this path: a quarter in which revenue grows sequentially and free cash flow does not worsen.
The full deep dive has the answer’s building blocks: cash, dilution, catalysts and risks, every figure sourced.
Free. No signup. You decide, we don’t recommend.
The latest financial filing is the Form 10-Q for the quarter and six months ended June 30, 2026, filed on August 13, 2026, with the results release furnished the same day as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K. The other filings of the window are an 8-K on August 3 reporting the closing of the Goonhilly and COMSAT acquisitions, an 8-K on June 3 filing the sales agreement for the at-the-market programme entered on June 2 under a Form S-3, and a sequence of Forms 4 and 144 from insiders. Nothing filed after the quarter restates the June 30 accounts, and the company reports on a calendar year.
Two company releases after the quarter belong beside the accounts. On September 1, 2026 the company announced an order for two IM 300 platforms from a new customer. On September 15, 2026 it announced that SXM-11, a geostationary communications satellite built on the IM 1300 series platform, had completed in-orbit testing and been handed over to SiriusXM after a launch on a Falcon 9 on June 28, 2026, and that the two companies have built 13 spacecraft together. The handover is a company release rather than a filing, and it is the first post-acquisition evidence in the window that the spacecraft line the Lanteris purchase created is delivering hardware.
Intuitive Machines describes itself as a next-generation space infrastructure company working across spacecraft manufacturing, communications, networks, mission operations and ground infrastructure, for commercial, civil and national security customers. The phrase it uses for that is build, connect and operate, and the balance sheet shows how much of the second and third words arrived in 2026: the group now consolidates Lanteris Space Holdings LLC, the former Maxar Space Systems bought on January 13, 2026; KinetX Inc., acquired on October 1, 2025; Space Network Solutions, a majority-owned subsidiary; and IX, LLC, a variable interest entity.
The revenue tells the same story in three lines. Product revenue was $166.7 million in the quarter, a line that did not exist a year earlier and that arrives with the spacecraft manufacturing Lanteris brought. Service revenue was $36.7 million, down from $50.3 million, and grant revenue was $2.8 million. The filing disaggregates the same revenue a second way, by customer type, and there the change of mix is sharpest: national security was 30% of revenue in the quarter against 3% a year earlier, civil 37% against 93% and commercial 32% against 4%. It reports one operating segment and one reportable segment, so build, connect and operate are not separate income statements. The acquisitions also explain the shape of the balance sheet, where goodwill of $379.2 million and intangible assets of $297.1 million now sit on total assets of $1,887.3 million.
Revenue of $206,168 thousand against $50,313 thousand a year earlier is the headline, and the composition matters more than the growth rate: $166,735 thousand of it is product revenue, $36,677 thousand is service revenue and $2,756 thousand is grant revenue, so a business that sold services a year ago now mostly sells spacecraft. Total cost of revenues was $170,302 thousand against $62,156 thousand, which moved the gross result from a loss of $11,843 thousand to a profit of $35,866 thousand, a gross margin of 17.4% against a negative one a year earlier. Operating expenses were $253,304 thousand against $78,953 thousand, and the loss from operations was $47,136 thousand against $28,640 thousand.
The non-GAAP measures need their definitions beside them. Adjusted EBITDA of negative $13,799 thousand against negative $25,368 thousand is net loss adjusted for income tax, depreciation and amortisation, interest income and expense, transaction and integration costs related to acquisitions of $7,919 thousand in the quarter, share-based compensation of $10,491 thousand, the change in fair value of warrant liabilities and of contingent consideration, and other income; it is not a cash measure and it excludes the acquisition costs the quarter actually paid. Free cash flow of negative $145,819 thousand in the half is net cash used in operating activities of $111,878 thousand less $33,941 thousand of property and equipment purchases. And the net loss of $62,841 thousand is not the figure attributable to Class A shareholders: $16,781 thousand of it belongs to the redeemable noncontrolling interest and $385 thousand of income to the noncontrolling interest, which is how the Up-C structure presents a single group in two registers.
The quarter to June 30, 2026 against the quarter to June 30, 2025, in millions of dollars.
The two charts below are the company’s own figures from the Form 10-Q. The first is the shape of the spending: total operating expense of $253.3 million against revenue of $206.2 million, in which cost of revenues is the largest part and general and administrative expense the second. The second is the revenue by line, where the product line appears from nothing and the service line falls, which is the same fact as the Lanteris acquisition stated in the income statement rather than in the cash flow statement.
Two things the charts cannot show and the text can. The gross margin of 17.4% is a calculation from the filing’s cost lines rather than a figure the company states, and it belongs to a different mix from a year earlier, when the service business alone produced a gross loss of $11.8 million; spacecraft manufacturing carries a different cost structure, and the margin on it is what the next two quarters test. And the two lunar missions that are loss contracts, IM-3 and IM-4, have had their estimated costs revised upward repeatedly, which is a cost of the mission business that arrives before the revenue does.
Total cost of revenues and operating expenses for the three months ended June 30, 2026, in thousands of dollars.
The company publishes a full-year outlook and it is the only forward-looking figure in these documents: the results release of August 13, 2026 states that Intuitive Machines expects 2026 revenue of $900 million to $1 billion and a positive adjusted EBITDA for the year. Against the $392,898 thousand of revenue reported in the six months, that range implies a second half of between $507.1 million and $607.1 million, which is more than half the year’s revenue in two quarters and a step up from the $206.2 million of the second quarter. The arithmetic that turns the range into a half-year figure is this page’s, and the range itself is the company’s.
The outlook is the number to hold beside the backlog, because the two have to agree. The company also states in the filing that it believes the cash and cash equivalents at June 30, 2026, the proceeds of the at-the-market programme and the February share sale, and the convertible notes, will be sufficient to fund its operating and capital requirements through at least the twelve months from the date the accounts were issued. What the guidance does not say is what gross margin the revenue assumes, and that is the number the second half will be read against.
The company’s backlog is large and the filing defines it: the total revenue the company expects to realise in future periods on contracts already awarded, less revenue already recognised. At June 30, 2026 backlog was $1,761,950 thousand against $213,070 thousand at December 31, 2025, an increase of $1.55 billion. Within that increase, $612.8 million was acquired with Lanteris in January, $1.34 billion is new awards, and $392.9 million was consumed by performance on existing contracts, with $15.5 million of downward adjustments mostly from the descoping of a rideshare contract on the IM-4 mission.
The filing also gives the stricter measure and the bridge between the two. Remaining performance obligations were $814.7 million, and the difference of $947.3 million against backlog is made up of about $587.0 million recorded in backlog for the multi-satellite programme discussed below and $316.0 million of funded contract value where revenue is recognised as services are performed. That bridge is the reason the page reports both: backlog includes work whose funding has not yet been appropriated, and the remaining performance obligations are the part that is contractually locked.
The quarter’s awards and the quarter’s backlog are not the same thing and must not be added. The release says the company booked $920 million of awards in the second quarter and a further $300 million in the third quarter to date; the filing says backlog rose by $1.55 billion from December 31, of which $612.8 million was acquired rather than won. Both figures are the company’s, and they measure different things: a booking is a contract signed, while the backlog movement is signed contracts minus the revenue earned and the adjustments made in the same period.
The largest single item needs its own qualifier. The company signed a contract for three commercial geostationary satellites with a total programme value the filing puts at more than $600.0 million, and it has received a $45.0 million authority to proceed; the backlog reflects an estimated total programme value rather than cash received. Separately, in July the company was selected by L3Harris to build eighteen IM 300 spacecraft platforms for the Space Development Agency’s Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3, and on September 1 it booked two more IM 300 platforms for a new customer. The first of those is a selection to build, the second is an order, and neither is a quarter’s revenue.
Total assets of $1,887,281 thousand against $757,154 thousand at December 31, 2025 is the summary of the half: the increase is almost entirely Lanteris, which contributed $360,460 thousand to the goodwill alone, and intangible assets that went from $12,968 thousand to $297,069 thousand. The receivables ledger also reclassified: trade and other receivables of $119,670 thousand against $12,193 thousand, contract assets of $50,992 thousand, inventory of $59,941 thousand and $209,833 thousand of orbital receivables now sit outside current assets, which is the accounting of long-dated satellite programmes.
Two exposures sit inside those balances and the filing names them. At June 30, 2026 about $10.1 million of accounts receivable and $41.4 million of orbital receivables were with EchoStar-affiliated entities, and groups of those entities, including Hughes Satellite Systems Corporation, commenced Chapter 11 proceedings on June 30 and August 2, 2026; the company had no contract assets with them. And the Delaware action over the conversion of the Series A preferred stock, brought on November 22, 2024 by Starlight Strategies IV LLC, remains open, with motions for summary judgment filed in February 2026 and no accrual recorded because a loss is not considered probable or estimable.
On the other side, total liabilities were $975,765 thousand against $553,452 thousand, including long-term debt of $336,352 thousand, warrant liabilities of $81,438 thousand against $60,394 thousand and contract liabilities of $215,518 thousand current. Between the liabilities and the equity sits the structure that makes this page’s share counts unusual: the company is an umbrella partnership C corporation, so a holding company owns equity in Intuitive Machines, LLC, and the group reports a Series A preferred stock subject to possible redemption of $6,945 thousand and redeemable noncontrolling interests of $1,194,653 thousand against $951,536 thousand. Shareholders’ equity is a deficit of $290,082 thousand, and the Class C shares are the instrument through which the noncontrolling interests are held.
The cash flow statement is the part of the filings that says how the growth was paid for. In the six months to June 30, 2026, operating activities used $111,878 thousand against $156 thousand provided a year earlier; investing activities used $481,003 thousand of which $447,062 thousand was the acquisition of businesses; and financing activities provided $386,564 thousand, of which $413,772 thousand was proceeds from the issuance of securities. Free cash flow, which the company defines as operating cash less property and equipment purchases, was negative $145,819 thousand against negative $14,020 thousand. In the quarter alone, operating activities used $59,802 thousand and free cash flow was negative $83,867 thousand.
Cash and cash equivalents ended the half at $367,354 thousand against $582,606 thousand at December 31, 2025, with a further $11,668 thousand of restricted cash. The movements that are neither operating nor investing are worth naming: $13,588 thousand to settle a securitization facility, $11,709 thousand of transaction costs on the securities issued, and $1,233 thousand of withholding taxes paid on share-based awards. The company’s own statement is that the cash on hand, the at-the-market programme, the February share sale and the convertible notes fund the plan for at least twelve months; the figure to watch against it is the quarterly free cash outflow.
There are two share counts in the filing and they are different measures with different dates. The cover page declares 173,231,343 shares of Class A common stock, no Class B and 55,692,725 shares of Class C outstanding as of August 6, 2026. The balance sheet states 171,720,829 Class A shares issued and 169,529,749 outstanding at June 30, 2026, against 123,472,960 issued and 121,281,880 outstanding at December 31, 2025, with 2,191,080 shares of treasury stock, and 55,851,004 Class C shares. This page uses the cover count for the market value because it is the more recent of the two, and the difference between them is made of the share sales and the other issuances between the two dates, among them the 960,649 shares issued for Goonhilly in August and the exchange of Class C units into Class A, which is why the Class C count falls while the Class A count rises.
The quarter’s issuance is now quantified. On June 2, 2026 the company entered a sales agreement under which it may sell Class A shares for up to $500.0 million, and in the second quarter it issued 8,259,379 shares for $234,614 thousand, about $235.2 million of net proceeds, and incurred about $0.6 million of initial set-up costs. Earlier, on February 27, 2026, it issued 11,574,069 shares at $15.12 for an aggregate purchase price of $175.0 million, with $7.5 million of related transaction costs. The Lanteris purchase added 22,991,028 shares at $17.57. Those are the three largest movements, and the rest of the rise from 121.3 million Class A shares outstanding at December 31 to 169.5 million at June 30 comes from restricted stock units and awards, options exercised, and the exchange of Class C units.
The company’s long-term debt is one instrument. On August 18, 2025 it issued $345.0 million aggregate principal of 2.500% convertible senior notes due 2030, unsecured, with interest payable on April 1 and October 1 and a maturity of October 1, 2030 unless converted earlier. At June 30, 2026 the carrying value was $336,352 thousand against $335,335 thousand at December 31, 2025, after $7,877 thousand of unamortised discount and $771 thousand of issuance costs; interest expense related to the notes was $2.7 million in the quarter and $5.3 million in the half.
Two instruments sit around the notes. The capped calls, entered on the same day at an aggregate cost of about $36.8 million, cover the Class A shares underlying the notes and are intended to reduce the dilution a conversion would cause; they can be settled in cash or shares at the company’s option. And the warrant liabilities were $81,438 thousand at June 30 against $60,394 thousand at December 31, with a $11,622 thousand charge in the quarter from their change in fair value, which is a non-cash charge that runs through the income statement and is added back in the adjusted EBITDA reconciliation. The page reports the three together because a reader comparing the loss with the cash flow needs to know which of the movements cost money and which did not.
Three acquisitions built the group in three quarters. Lanteris Space Holdings LLC, the former Maxar Space Systems, closed on January 13, 2026 for aggregate consideration of $853.3 million: $405.6 million in cash, $43.7 million of transaction bonuses treated as consideration and 22,991,028 Class A shares valued at $404.0 million at the $17.57 closing price on the acquisition date, and it contributed $360,460 thousand of the goodwill on the balance sheet. KinetX Inc. closed on October 1, 2025 and left a $59 thousand goodwill adjustment in the half. Goonhilly Earth Station Limited and COMSAT LLC closed on August 3, 2026, after the quarter.
The ground segment is the part the accounts do not yet carry and the releases do. The company acquired Goonhilly Earth Station Limited for GBP 37,000,000, split equally between cash and 960,649 Class A shares, and COMSAT LLC for a base cash purchase price of $10.0 million, both from sellers in the Goonhilly group under an agreement dated May 14, 2026. The filing states that it is still evaluating the assets acquired and liabilities assumed and cannot yet give a preliminary purchase price allocation, so the goodwill from these two is not in the June 30 balance sheet at all. The company says the network will support the IM-3 and Altus-1 missions and that it previously used Goonhilly for IM-1 and IM-2.
Two other subsequent events belong here. In July 2026 the company amended the lease on its Palo Alto, California facility, extending the term by 17 years to July 2043 with a ten-year option beyond that and remeasuring a right-of-use asset and lease liability of about $109.1 million. And Lanteris carries a Department of Justice civil investigation: the Civil Division issued a civil investigative demand in October 2023 over allegations that Lanteris failed to meet cybersecurity requirements in federal contracts and government contracts awarded to it, in late 2025 the department presented an initial civil review alleging False Claims Act violations, and the seller’s parent, Vantor Holdings Inc., agreed to indemnify Intuitive Machines for that liability when it acquired the company.
Intuitive Machines has flown two lunar missions, the first in February 2024 and the second in March 2025, and the ones that follow are the subject of the largest cost revisions in the filing. The IM-3 mission contract has been a loss contract since 2021, and changes in estimated contract costs added $6.3 million of losses in the first half of 2026 against $18.5 million a year earlier; its period of performance runs through March 2027. The IM-4 mission became a loss contract in the second quarter of 2025 and took a further $16.2 million of estimated losses in the first half of 2026 against $2.7 million a year earlier; it was awarded in August 2024 with estimated revenue of $124.5 million and its period of performance runs through August 2028.
IM-3 is the third mission under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme and the company describes it as a return to the Moon; Altus-1, under the Near Space Network Services contract, is to be its first lunar data relay satellite. The engineering and the accounting point in different directions here. A loss provision on a fixed-price lunar mission is the cost of the mission business arriving before the revenue, and every revision upward is a signal about how hard the delivery schedule is; against that, the same programmes are what the backlog and the national-security work are built on.
The mission numbers do not follow the order of the awards, and the difference matters. The sixth NASA payload contract is IM-5, awarded in June 2026, with a fixed-price base-period value of $68.6 million, a customer option period worth $79.7 million and a performance incentive of up to $15.0 million; the option had not been exercised by the customer at June 30, 2026, and the base period runs through August 2027. The fifth NASA payload contract is IM-6, awarded earlier, in March 2026, with estimated revenue under fixed-price contracts of $160.1 million excluding $18.3 million of constrained revenue, and a period of performance through May 2031.
The distinction the page keeps is between a base period, an option and an incentive. The $68.6 million is contracted; the $79.7 million is a right the customer may exercise and had not; the $15.0 million is a performance incentive that is earned, not owed. The results release describes the June award as the company’s sixth lunar lander mission under NASA’s Moonbase programme for a standardised production lander, which is IM-5. Adding the base value to the option to a headline would overstate the contracted work by more than the base period itself.
The part of the business that is neither a lander nor a satellite bus is the network, and the accounting for it is still in construction. At June 30, 2026 construction in progress included $86.2 million of capitalised costs for the fabrication and development of communications satellites and ground network assets, primarily in support of the NASA Near Space Network contract, against $50.8 million at December 31, 2025. The ground stations those assets connect to are the ones Goonhilly and COMSAT brought in August.
The national-security side is where the mix changed fastest. The release says national-security revenue went from 3% of revenue to 30% year on year in the second quarter, and the July selection by L3Harris to build eighteen IM 300 platforms for the Space Development Agency’s missile-defence tranche is the order that explains the direction; the release describes the award as supporting the Golden Dome constellation. That is the part of the backlog whose funding comes through a prime contractor and a government programme rather than a commercial customer, and it is the reason the page reports the backlog’s composition and not only its total.
The release adds one more contract that belongs with the network. The company says it contracted with NASA for two prime lunar reconnaissance awards, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera and ShadowCam, to lead lunar imaging operations, data storage, data processing and analytics for the Artemis and Moonbase programmes and for commercial lunar missions. It is a services award rather than a spacecraft order, which is why it sits here and not in the backlog figures the filing gives.
The insider filings in the window are Forms 4 and Forms 144, and the two are not the same document. A Form 144 is a notice of intent to sell restricted securities and does not mean a sale happened; a Form 4 reports a transaction that did happen, including shares withheld to cover taxes on the vesting of an award, which is not a decision to sell. This page therefore does not read a direction into the sequence, and the dates are reported as what they are: Form 144 filings on September 18 and August 27, 2026, and Forms 4 on September 10, August 28, August 26, August 12, July 29 — two on that date — July 15 and July 1.
Two other filing types carry ownership information. Two Schedule 13D amendments were filed on July 1 and July 7, 2026 and a Schedule 13G amendment on August 6, 2026, each by a holder reporting a position above five per cent; a 13D amendment is a change in a previously disclosed position and is not noise, while a Form 144 is not a sale. The provider’s readings of insider ownership at 11.83% and institutional ownership at 78.81% are dated readings from a third party and are reported as such, not as company figures.
The market value on this page is a calculation with its inputs stated. The Nasdaq close of September 21, 2026 was $15.72, and the cover page of the Form 10-Q declares 173,231,343 Class A and 55,692,725 Class C shares outstanding as of August 6, 2026, which is 228,924,068 shares together; at that close they are worth about $3.60 billion. On the Class A count alone the figure is about $2.72 billion, and the difference is the noncontrolling interest the Class C shares represent, which is why this page states which count it uses.
The provider’s readings of September 22, 2026 are reported with their label and are not company figures: a market value of about $3.63 billion, a float of 152.73 million shares, a short float of 23.26% of the float, insider ownership of 11.83%, institutional ownership of 78.81%, an average analyst target of $31.00 and an average recommendation of 1.25. To the same reading, Rocket Lab is at 7.70% of float short with a target of $111.89, AST SpaceMobile at 34.18% with $84.19, Planet Labs at 10.27% with $35.00, Redwire at 17.20% with $14.69 and BlackSky at 19.40% with $38.71. None of those is a company figure, and the rest of the page works from the revenue, the backlog and the cash the company itself discloses, each with the date it gave them.
Source: every company figure quoted comes from the filings and the releases listed above, each with the date it was published. Revenue by line, the cost lines, the operating loss, the balance sheet and the Up-C structure, the cash flow statement and free cash flow, the backlog and its bridge to remaining performance obligations, the share counts, the convertible notes and the capped calls, the acquisition accounting and the lunar mission terms are as stated in the Form 10-Q; the 2026 revenue outlook, the adjusted EBITDA measure, the awards of the quarter, the national-security revenue mix and the multi-satellite programme are as stated in the release, which the filing supports. The market value and the gross margin are Merlintrader calculations and are labelled as such. Where a contract is an authority to proceed, an option period, an incentive or a selection to build rather than a firm order, the page repeats the qualifier the company gave it. Insider filings are described by their type and their date.
Every Merlintrader stock hub, catalyst update and market brief is published to Telegram the moment it goes live. No paywall, no spam, just the research.
Disclaimer. This content is published by Merlintrader for educational and informational purposes only. It is independent journalism and research. It does not constitute investment advice, an investment recommendation, an offer or a solicitation to buy or sell any security, and it is not a research report within the meaning of applicable United States securities regulation. Nothing here should be read as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold $LUNR or any other security.
Figures are taken from public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, company press releases and market-data providers, and are stated with their reference dates. Data can change without notice, and figures published before a results release become outdated the moment that release is issued. Merlintrader makes no representation that the information is complete or current at the time of reading. Readers should verify every figure against the primary source before acting on it.
Space infrastructure, defence technology and applied artificial intelligence companies carry substantial risk. Programme delays, cost overruns, launch failures, contract cancellations and changes in government procurement can move results sharply from one quarter to the next. Contract ceilings and vendor-pool positions are not orders. Companies that fund themselves through at-the-market equity programmes or convertible instruments can dilute existing holders materially and without advance notice, and businesses at this stage can lose all of their value. Every reader is responsible for their own decisions and should consult a licensed financial adviser where appropriate.
Merlintrader may hold positions in securities mentioned. Some links on this page are affiliate or referral links, including those to Finviz and Stocktwits, which may generate a commission at no cost to the reader. Full legal information is available on the disclaimer and terms of use and privacy pages.
Conferences, industry summits, government-facing events and company watchpoints across the sector, in one free calendar.
Open the Space, Defense & AI Event Calendar →
