Why Intuitive Car Stock Is Up 15% Today

Intuitive machines (MON 11.93%) Shares were up 15.8% by 9:45 a.m. ET Friday morning after the company announced it had won its fourth lunar landing contract from NASA.

IM-4 — the name of the mission — will see Intuitive Machines send another Nova-C-class lunar lander to the lunar south pole, there to deliver “six science and technology payloads, including one led by the European Space Agency. suite of exercises.”

CLPS loves LUNR

Intuitive Machines’ IM-4 mission falls under the umbrella of NASA’s multibillion-dollar Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which hires private space companies to transport payloads to the Moon in preparation for Project Artemis – – the return of mankind to the moon. From a financial point of view, CLPS is structured so that contractors perform missions as a service for NASA, rather than the old system where companies would build and sell NASA spacecraft, which the space agency would then launch and operate.

In this, it mimics NASA’s approach in ongoing contracts to transport supplies (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services or “COTS”) and astronauts (Commercial Crew Program or “CCP”) to the International Space Station.

The objective is to reduce the cost of space missions for NASA. And by all evidence, that goal is succeeding. Intuitive Machines will be paid $116.9 million for the IM-4 mission. For context, Surveyor 1, NASA’s first mission to put an unmanned lander on the Moon, cost the equivalent of $4.2 billion in 2024 dollars.

Is Intuitive Machines stock a buy?

In short, Intuitive Machines gives NASA a bargain in spaceflight. But it’s a business for Intuitive Machines you?

That remains to be seen. Valued at $345 million after today’s stock price increase, Intuitive Machines stock is still not profitable. Analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence don’t expect it to become profitable before 2026, either, believing the company needs to double its annual revenue to $475 million or more to reach a production scale large enough to start turning a profit.

The good news for investors is: the more of these NASA contracts Intuitive wins, the closer it gets to Intuitive’s profits.