TOP STORY
🚀 Rocket Lab Soars 25% After Its $8B Bet to Become the Next SpaceX

🟢 It was a four-day trading week, with US markets closed on Friday for Independence Day and Canadian markets closed on Wednesday for Canada Day…

🗞️ But even with one less day, a lot happened this week. In today’s Buzz, we’ll cover:

• 🚀 Rocket Lab ($RKLB) soaring 25% after the largest commercial space acquisition in history

• ☁️ Meta ($META) jumping 9% after entering the cloud computing race, competing directly with AWS and Azure

• 🚗 Tesla ($TSLA) crushing delivery estimates by 18% but still falling 7%.

• 👨‍⚖️ Google ($GOOGL) losing its €4.1B EU fine appeal that accused it of ‘abusing Android’s dominance’

• 👟 And Nike ($NKE) rising 5% after tariff relief saves the quarter

📊 But first, a quick market overview. Across the indexes:

• The S&P 500 rose +1.76%

• The Nasdaq 100 rose +0.72%

• The TSX rose +0.84%

🔄 Looking at specific sectors, the rotation out of semiconductor stocks continued, with the Semiconductor Index ($SMH) falling another 4%, despite still being up massively year-to-date, while oil extended its losing streak to four straight weeks, staying still at ~$72/barrel as the global economy slowly recovers from the oil shock brought by the Iran war (with peace talks paused until next Thursday for Ali Khamenei’s funeral).

📈 The Dow hit an all-time high this week, with unemployment ticking down to 4.2% from 4.3%, and 2-year US bond yields falling. And despite a poor US jobs report released on Thursday, coming in at 57,000 jobs vs. 115,000 expected, markets finished in the green.

🤿 But without further ado, let’s dive into our top story for today!

🛰️ Rocket Lab Acquires Iridium in a Bid to Become the Next SpaceX

🌍 On Monday, Rocket Lab ($RKLB), one of the largest space companies in the world, announced it would be acquiring Iridium Communications ($IRDM), one of the largest satellite operators in the world, creating a massive new competitor in the space race to rival SpaceX ($SPCX).

💰 The deal is valued at $8 billion, making it one of the largest commercial space acquisitions ever, with a price per share of $54 ($27 cash + stock), a 24% premium to Iridium’s last traded share price. It’s expected to close mid-2027 and will be financed using a $3.6 billion bridge loan.

📈 RocketLab surged 16% on the announcement, ending the week up 25%, while Iridium’s shares jumped ~30% to match the offer price. So let’s take a look at what all this means for one of Blossom’s favorite space stocks…

🛰️ What Does Iridium Actually Do and Why Is Rocket Lab Buying Them?

🌐 Iridium is a satellite-only space company that operates 66 low-Earth-orbit units. Its network serves around 2.5 million subscribers across government, defense, aviation, maritime, and consumer markets. In 2025, the company booked $114.4 million in annual profit on $871.7 million in revenue.

📜 Iridium was founded by Motorola in the late 1980s, which spent roughly $5 billion building it before spinning it off (it later went bankrupt after its IPO). The company survived by pivoting its business toward government and defense, and even before the deal was announced, shares had more than doubled year-to-date.

📶 The specific type of network Iridium controls (L-band satellite) uses a scarce, nearly impossible-to-obtain frequency band that works anywhere on Earth… in any weather, at any altitude, regardless of the location.

💬 According to Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck:

👀 So why does Rocket Lab want to own a satellite communications network? Well, we’ve seen this strategy before…

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TOP STORY CONT
🚀 Rocket Lab Copies The SpaceX Playbook

🤔 Now, a rocket company deciding all of a sudden that it also wants to own a satellite communications network isn’t a new strategy - it’s this same playbook that built SpaceX into the company it is today.

🛰️ SpaceX first built and launched rockets for other companies, then launched its own satellite constellation (Starlink), which is now its biggest profit/cash flow source by far (and is now working to tie it all together with AI compute).

🏗️ The vertical stack of space (factory, rocket, spectrum, orbital operations) is how you build a competitive space platform rather than just a launch contractor, and it’s the strategy Rocket Lab intends to copy.

🏆 With this acquisition, Rocket Lab becomes the only company on Earth besides SpaceX to operate this entire stack, around the same time when Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket (a medium-lift, reusable vehicle designed to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9) is scheduled for its first flight in Q4 2026.

⏱️ Meaning, by the time Neutron is flying regular missions, Rocket Lab will already own a revenue-generating satellite network to fill, a noticeably different business than simply launching other people’s satellites.

📣 What Analysts Are Saying

🎯 Wall Street was positive on the deal, with Louie DiPalma, an analyst at William Blair, calling the deal “very strategic,” noting that Rocket Lab is picking up the L-band network, profitable government contracts, and 2.5 million paying subscribers, all in one fell swoop.

💬 As one analyst at Caelus Partners put it:

🤔 Overall, getting defense and government relationships, a massive competitive satellite network, consistent revenue and added profit, all in one deal, is a pretty solid outcome.

⚠️ But Of Course There’s Risk

😰 The bull case is pretty compelling, but Rocket Lab is taking on real risk here. A $3.6 billion bridge loan is a significant balance-sheet leverage for a deal that won't close until mid-2027, and integrating a complex satellite business is notoriously hard to get right.

⚠️ And SpaceX is MUCH larger. Even with a new, competitive Rocket Lab emerging from the merger, Starlink still has over 10 million subscribers and close to 11,000 satellites in orbit, which is more than 150x and 4x Iridium's numbers, respectively.

⚖️ So, while being 1 of only 2 companies in the world to operate a vertically-integrated space stack is a meaningful outcome, it’s still David vs Goliath, and it will be a big battle for Rocket Lab to truly rival SpaceX 1-on-1.

💰 RKLB Volume Spikes to 3x Average on Blossom

🌼 On Blossom, the news of the acquisition spiked RKLB trading volume to nearly ~3x its year-to-date average, with ~70% of members buying and ~30% selling.

💸 Interestingly, while unique buyers outnumbered sellers, if we look at raw dollar amounts, sellers outweighed buyers, with $1.4M sold vs $860K bought. Across the sellers, 70% closed out their entire position, accounting for 79% of the total sell volume.

🤑 So by the numbers, it looks like the acquisition pop triggered a wave of Blossom holders to cash out over the two-day window, while newer buyers dollar-cost-averaged in at smaller sizes.

💬 Join the discussion and see even more insights on the Rocket Lab stock page on Blossom!

☁️ Now Rocket Lab wasn’t the only company making big moves this week… Meta also announced a major change to its business as it puts its hat in the AI cloud computing race.

⚙️ But before we switch gears, a quick word from our friends at CBOE about a new ETF that launched this week!

CBOE ETF ALERT
📣 New ETF Alert: Purpose SpaceX (SPCX) Yield Shares ETF

🪐 Speaking of space, a new Space ETF has officially had ‘lift-off’!

✨ Purpose Investments’ new ETF SPCX went live on the CBOE exchange this week, seeking to provide shareholders with:

• (i) long-term capital appreciation through purchasing and holding class A common stock of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (“SpaceX”) with the potential use of leverage through cash borrowing of up to 33% of the ETF's unlevered net asset value

• (ii) distributions by writing covered call options and/or cash covered put options on a portion of the ETF’s portfolio.

BIG TECH & AI
🤖 Meta Jumps 9% After Announcing an AWS/Azure Competitor

💻 On Wednesday, Bloomberg broke the news that Meta ($META) is building a cloud computing business to sell its excess AI infrastructure to outside customers, putting it in direct competition with behemoths in the space such as Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud.

📈 📉 Meta shares rose 9% on the news, the stock’s biggest single-day gain since April, with other smaller cloud computing companies like CoreWeave ($CRWV) and Nebius ($NBIS) falling as much as 14% and 17% respectively.

📦 The initiative is called Meta Compute, led internally by Meta’s head of infrastructure, Santosh Janardhan, Daniel Gross from Superintelligence Labs, and Meta President Dina Powell McCormick. And according to Bloomberg, two products are being developed:

• 🧩 AI model access, where Meta will sell developers access to its own AI models via API (similar to AWS Bedrock)

• 🖥️ Raw GPU compute, where Meta will rent compute capacity directly to other companies (the traditional cloud computing offering)

🧠 As of today, AWS Bedrock (the closest to the first product Meta is planning above) lets developers use AI models and pay per token, and Meta expects to offer the same setup. Meta will run the model, own the chips, and charge for access, exactly the framework Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are using.

💬 Zuckerberg talked about the potential of a compute business back in Meta’s shareholder call in May, saying:

🔮 But at that time, the Zuck also mentioned that they hadn’t done it yet because they believed they could still use the compute, and that’s what’s causing some analysts to worry…

😬 Some Analysts Are Skeptical

🎯 With all the positives that could come from the new business, the biggest issue is many analysts think it’s more strategic for Meta to use the compute themselves, with Doug Anmuth from JPMorgan saying:

⚖️ His concern is that Meta’s competitive edge is its users, not its data centers. Becoming a cloud provider could easily be a costly distraction.

💪 That said, Meta has the balance sheet, the talent depth, and the scale to make a genuine run if they tried. And Zuckerberg has surprised skeptics before.

⏳ The 9% single-day pop suggests the market is at least taking the option seriously, but whether the business actually materializes is still a big TBD.

🗓️ Before we wrap up with 3 other major headlines of the week, a quick word about our upcoming event in less than 3 weeks!

JOIN US IRL
🗓️ BlossomCon is Less Than 3 Weeks Away!

🤩 BlossomCon Toronto, the ultimate IRL conference for DIY investors, is just 20 days away (with BlossomCon Vancouver coming up 1 month later).

🤯 We’ve officially crossed over 1,000 attendees for Toronto with a full schedule of investing panels featuring speakers like Marc Beavis, Adriano from Passive Income Investing, Joyee Yang, Canadian in a T-Shirt, and many more

🙋‍♂️ If you haven’t bought your ticket already, this will be the last chance to get a discounted price before prices go up!

🎁 As a small thank you for reading to the end, feel free to use the code WEEKLYBUZZ15 to $15 off your ticket!

IN OTHER NEWS
⭐️ Other Big Headlines

🚗 Tesla Beats Delivery Expectations, Still Falls 8%

• 📈 Tesla ($TSLA) reported its Q2 2026 deliveries this week, posting a total of 480,126 vehicles vs. the 406,000 expected, beating consensus estimates by roughly 18%.

• 📉 But despite the good report, the stock fell nearly 8% on Thursday (a correction from the 13% rally in the days leading into the report).

• ⚠️ While good news for the company, Jed Dorsheimer, analyst at William Blair, noted that this may have been a quarter boosted by “last-time buys” of the discontinued Model S and X (Tesla stopped taking new orders April 1). And now that that tailwind is gone, there may be tough tides ahead.

👟 Nike Rises 5% After Tariff Relief Saves the Quarter

• 🔄 On Tuesday, Nike ($NKE) reported its Q4 2026 earnings, surprising the market by beating on the top and bottom line. Shares initially fell as much as 8% after hours, but recovered the next day to end Wednesday up about 5%.

• 🏃 While Nike’s underlying business is still struggling, with revenue falling 1% to $10.97 billion, and China revenue continuing to decline (Nike CEO Elliott Hill even said himself that results “aren't there yet”),

• 💰 Even so, a $986 million tariff recovery pushed EPS up, and Nike’s running shoes segment is now up double digits for the 5th straight quarter, both of which helped flip sentiment.

• 📉 Management guided to a low- to mid-single-digit sales decline in H1 FY2027. Nike shares now sit at a roughly 11-year low, down ~73% over the past 5 years alone.

🧑‍⚖️ Google Loses €4.1B EU Fine Appeal

• ⚖️ Last but not least, on Thursday Google lost it’s appeal with the European Court of Justice (the EU’s highest court) for its massive €4.1 billion ($4.67 billion) antitrust fine.

• 📱 The fine stems from what EU regulators call Google's abuse of Android’s dominance, notably pre-installing its own apps through agreements with phone manufacturers and locking out competition as a result.

• 🔨 Google said the judgment “fails to recognize” its investment in Android. No new appeals are allowed going forward.

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Featured Posts of the Week

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