(June 9): SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO) is well oversubscribed with multiple institutional investors placing orders for about US$10 billion ($12.86 billion) or more of shares, according to people familiar with the matter, as demand builds for a potentially record-setting debut.
Banks leading the offering by Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence (AI) company are expected to stop taking orders from institutional investors on Wednesday after the market closes in New York at 4pm, some of the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public.
Closing the order books gives banks time to gauge demand ahead of the listing and advise the company on pricing. SpaceX’s IPO is set to price on June 11 and trade the following day. The company is offering 555.6 million shares at a fixed price of US$135 each, which would raise about US$75 billion, and value it at about US$1.8 trillion.
Retail investors can still submit orders for SpaceX shares on some platforms beyond the Wednesday deadline. The company is allocating as much as 30% of the offering to retail, Bloomberg News has reported.
On Tuesday, Morgan Stanley is hosting about 300 institutional investors at the bank’s New York headquarters for meetings with SpaceX management including president Gwynne Shotwell and chief financial officer Bret Johnsen, a person familiar with the plans said. The event will be hosted by the bank’s co-president Dan Simkowitz, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing private meetings.
A spokesperson for SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comments. Representatives of Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.
See also: OpenAI filed confidentially for IPO as rivals race to market
Anticipation is growing for the IPO which is expected to be the biggest ever, topping Saudi Aramco’s US$29.4 billion debut in 2019. The company has disclosed new sources of revenue in recent weeks, emphasising its AI clout. Last Friday, SpaceX announced a deal with Alphabet Inc’s Google that would see the Gemini AI model maker pay US$920 million a month as part of a cloud services agreement set to run through 2029. It previously disclosed a similar pact with Anthropic PBC.
The company formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp will trade on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the symbol SPCX.
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