SpaceX, largest IPO ever, set to begin trading

SpaceX, the largest IPO to ever hit the public market, will begin trading on Friday morning.

Shares of the company, which will be listed under the ticker symbol SPCX, will begin to show price indications at 9:50 a.m. ET, according to a notice from the Nasdaq stock exchange.

While early quotes can be a guide as to where an IPO will open, the process to begin trading typically takes hours, with dozens of banks and the company itself working through orders that are flooding in from hopeful investors.

On Thursday, SpaceX and its bankers set $135 as its IPO price, giving the rocket company a $1.77 trillion value before shares even begin to trade.

The stock debut comes at a time when the AI-fueled euphoria on Wall Street has never been higher. Despite a war with Iran that has stretched into a fourth month, major stock indexes continue to notch record highs, thanks primarily to shares of AI-linked companies.

John Waldron, president of Goldman Sachs, said the SpaceX IPO is a sign that there’s an appetite to fund the artificial intelligence boom.

“It shows you that the capital markets — led by the US capital markets, but the global capital markets — are demonstrating a willingness to finance this AI infrastructure build and this build in space,” he told Bloomberg Television in a Friday morning interview.

Goldman Sachs is the lead underwriter of the SpaceX offering, along with Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. There are more than a dozen additional banks involved in the process.

Not everyone is convinced by the high valuation, though.

Analysts at Morningstar wrote last week that they believe the company is “overvalued” given its financials. The company has yet to generate a profit and produced roughly $19 billion in revenue last year. “We value SpaceX at $780 billion,” the analysts wrote.

One of SpaceX’s top leaders, chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell, dismissed skeptics in an interview on CNBC Friday morning.

“Look at our track record, look at our history,” she said. “We do really difficult things.”

She also cautioned that that SpaceX is operating more for the long term than for quarterly earnings reports.

“I do not want to focus on quarterly earnings,” she said. “I’m not saying we’re not going to do right by our investors, but what folks who invest in SpaceX need to know is that what we’re doing is very futuristic.”

The IPO, which may also be viewed as a referendum on Musk himself, will be closely watched by those invested in the company — and those who are not.

Musk is a politically and socially divisive figure who uses the social media platform X, a SpaceX subsidiary, to promote a nativist, far-right agenda around the world.

SpaceX, in its IPO filing, said it planned to offer 30% of the IPO to everyday investors through retail brokerages such as Fidelity, Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade, Charles Schwab, and SoFi.

“There are plenty of options being put in place for retail” investors, Waldron said. “I think you’ll see plenty of opportunities for retail to invest.”

It will also be a test of the markets themselves.

Waldron said “many of us have been preparing for this for a long time,” including the Nasdaq stock exchange and the banks themselves.

“A lot of preparation has been put in place,” he added.

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