Elon Musk’s SpaceX Blade Plan Knocks Howmet As HWM Suffers Steepest Slide In 16 Months

• Musk said over the weekend that SpaceX and Tesla are racing to add solar capacity, but natural gas will still be required for years to fill gaps.
• He identified blade-and-vane casting as the constraint on new turbines and said doing that work inside SpaceX could bring units online as much as 18 months sooner — a shift he described as a “profound game-changer.”
• Deutsche Bank said markets appear to fear SpaceX could enter the gas-turbine arena and unsettle pricing.

Shares of Howmet Aerospace (HWM) closed down 7.5% on Monday after Elon Musk said SpaceX will cast industrial gas-turbine blades and vanes at a Texas foundry, raising concerns that a well-funded newcomer could challenge this scarce supplier niche.

Howmet is one of a handful of shops that cast the blades and vanes that sit in the hottest part of a gas turbine. Musk said that casting work is what is slowing new turbines, and that SpaceX will do it itself in Texas. Investors sold Howmet because a captive SpaceX foundry could take future turbine-part demand off Howmet’s books and weaken the shortage that has supported prices and the stock as data center demand surged.

HWM stock clocked its worst day since April 2025 on Monday.

Musk: Casting Is the Constraint

Musk said over the weekend that SpaceX and Tesla are racing to add solar capacity, but natural gas will still be required for years to fill gaps. He identified blade-and-vane casting as the constraint on new turbines and said doing that work inside SpaceX could bring units online as much as 18 months sooner — a shift he described as a “profound game-changer.” The comments followed reports that SpaceX is standing up a blades-and-vanes foundry in Bastrop, Texas.

Jefferies Sees a Four-Year Ramp

Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu put the aerospace and industrial gas-turbine engine-products market at $10 billion in 2025 sales. Channel checks, she wrote, point to about four years before SpaceX products arrive. The field is concentrated among four firms: Howmet, Berkshire Hathaway’s Precision Castparts, Consolidated Precision Products and Doncasters, she added. Only Howmet, however, is publicly traded.

Bernstein Sees Vertical Integration, Not a New Supplier

Bernstein said it has little doubt SpaceX will try to build the capability. The firm expects the effort to serve SpaceX’s own power needs rather than turn the company into a merchant seller of forgings and castings. On that reading, Monday’s slide in Howmet “should be a buying opportunity,” it said. Bernstein kept an ‘Outperform’ rating on HWM and a $328 price target.

Deutsche Bank Downplays Disruption Risk

Deutsche Bank said markets appear to fear SpaceX could enter the gas-turbine arena and unsettle pricing. The bank argued the threat “is far less threatening than it looks at first glance.” In theory, it added, SpaceX could still team with an incumbent blade maker such as Howmet or Precision Castparts.

How Did HWM Retail Traders React?

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around HWM stock jumped from bearish to bullish territory over the past 24 hours while message volume stayed at normal levels.

A Stocktwits user opined that HWM is overvalued as compared to its peers.

Another user opined that the drop on Monday might be overdone, opining that even if SpaceX internalizes production, Howmet relies on other customers

HWM stock has gained 19% year-to-date. 

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