Stellar debut on Wall Street for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
On the eve of its long-awaited stock market listing, scheduled for today, June 12, SpaceX raised a record $75 billion with its initial public offering on Thursday, demonstrating investors’ enthusiasm for Elon Musk’s galaxy.
The operation, set to become the largest initial public offering in history, assigns the company founded by Elon Musk an initial valuation of nearly $1.8 trillion.
“This historic IPO highlights investors’ insatiable appetite for companies tied to the artificial intelligence boom, paving the way for the stock market listing of Anthropic, creator of Claude, and OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT, by the end of the year,” notes today the Financial Times.
All the details.
THE SHARE PLACEMENT
According to the statement released last night by the aerospace company, SpaceX’s IPO closed yesterday with the placement of over 555.6 million shares, for a total value of $75 billion at a price of $135 each, in an operation that attracted record demand from investors.
The placement price matches the estimate provided by the company in recent days and brings the initial market capitalization to nearly $1.8 trillion. Once trading begins, the value of the shares may vary depending on investor demand and the number of shares available on the market.
If the stock opens trading at $135 or higher, SpaceX would immediately join the group of the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies.
INVESTORS’ EXPECTATIONS
Interest in the listing appears particularly high among both institutional and retail investors. Some analysts have already indicated valuations higher than the price set by the company.
Among them is the financial brokerage firm Oppenheimer, which has estimated a potential value of $190 per share. The actual price will, however, be determined by open market trading through the meeting of supply and demand.
MUSK TRILLIONAIRE AND MILLIONAIRE EMPLOYEES
Most of Musk’s wealth now resides in SpaceX, where he holds a stake valued at about $866 billion. Together with Tesla and his other holdings, his net worth will exceed $1.1 trillion when the shares begin trading on Friday, according to calculations by Reuters based on company documents. The total includes equity components that will vest over time.
Not only that: as reported by the New York Times, according to an analysis by Hill.com, a San Francisco-based investment platform specializing in the private equity market, today’s SpaceX listing will make over 4,400 current and former employees millionaires. Among them, about 400 would see the value of their holdings reach or exceed $100 million.
MUSK’S CONTROL REMAINS UNCHANGED
Despite going public, Elon Musk will maintain virtually total control of the company, notes the BBC.
Thanks to the combination of Class A and Class B shares, the founder will hold about 40% of the total capital but will retain over 84% of the voting rights of the aerospace company he founded. This structure will ensure he controls the company’s strategic decisions in the future as well.
The most immediate comparison is with Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, who, despite benefiting from a similar share structure, exercises about 60% voting control of the company, the British outlet further comments. The governance planned for SpaceX will also allow the company not to necessarily include members considered independent on the board of directors.
