Forget SpaceX, Here’s a Cheaper Way for Investors to Get Into Orbit
The best space opportunity may not be the one everyone is talking about. Here’s how to play this little-known name.
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Some of the shine has come of the market debut of SpaceX (SPCX) in recent weeks. The stock now trades nearly 10% below where it IPO’d on June 12.
The decline off its post-IPO peak has knocked more than $1 trillion of the market cap off SPCX shares. Still, SpaceX sports a market capitalization of approximately $1.7 trillion. Not bad for a company that lost nearly $5 billion in 2025 on under $19 billion in sales.
Today I am going to discuss a cheaper way to go to space involving a recent addition to my portfolio. The options against this equity are quite lucrative and have decent liquidity, setting up good potential return with ample downside protection to boot.
The company is question is York Space Systems (YSS). This is name most investors may not have heard of yet, despite its $2.4 billion market cap, as the shares just IPO’d this January. The stock has been cut by more than half from its post-IPO peak in April.
This space and defense company builds satellite platforms and related mission systems for both governmental and commercial concerns. York manufactures the physical satellite buses that carry customer payloads into space. It also provides electric-propulsion systems that enable satellites to maneuver once they get to space and operates a ground-based network that allows satellites to maintain communication with Earth.
YSS shares currently trade around $18 after shooting up past the $40 level early in the second quarter on enthusiasm for space-related concerns. However, similar to SpaceX shares, that enthusiasm has ebbed recently.
York has a pristine balance sheet with roughly $650 million of net cash and marketable securities and total liquidity of about $800 million in total liquidity as of the end of the first quarter. Management has guided sales to between $545 million and $595 million for 2026. At the midpoint, that would represent revenue growth of over 45% revenue growth compared to 2025.
The current Wall Street consensus has the company posting a net loss per share of just over $0.50 cents in 2026. However, they then see York posting a similar profit per share in 2027 on around 50% sales growth. The company’s backlog grew solidly to just over $640 million in Q1.
YSS enjoys strong analyst firm support as can be seen above, with most price targets in the $30s.
This is how I took a decent initial stake in this space-related name this past week.
Option Strategy
This is how one can initiate a holding in YSS with a covered call order. As a reminder, covered call orders involve buying an equity and simultaneously selling just out of the money call strikes against the new position.
Using the May $15 call strikes, fashion a covered call order with a net debit in the $11.00 to $11.50 a share range (net stock price – option premium).
At the midpoint of the range, this strategy provides downside protection of more than 35%, with upside potential of 33% even if this equity trades down just over 15% for the option duration.
At the time of publication, Jensen was long YSS.
