Companies going public almost always leave the price for last. They set a range, send executives on a roadshow, take the temperature of the institutions, and let demand decide where the shares land. SpaceX has decided to do it backwards.
The company plans to fix its IPO price at $135 a share before the roadshow even begins, according to a person familiar with the matter, targeting a record $75bn raise.
The mechanics are worth pausing on, because they are unusual to the point of being a statement. Fixing a price ahead of bookbuilding removes the ritual by which investors negotiate valuation down. It tells the market that the terms are the terms.
At $135 a share across roughly 555.6 million shares, the raise would be the largest in history, and it implies a valuation of about $1.75tn. SpaceX is aiming to debut on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, with trading expected on 12 June.
This is not SpaceX’s first move toward the public markets, and TNW readers have watched the run-up closely. The company filed its S-1 earlier this year, opening the path to what would be the largest listing ever, and the prospectus confirmed that Musk and insiders would retain dominant voting control through a dual-class structure. The fixed price is the next escalation: having filed on its own terms, SpaceX now intends to price on them too.
