Despite an expected record-breaking IPO, SpaceX will still have to follow the rules and wait at least a year before it’s added to the S&P 500, the benchmark behind many Americans’ retirement funds S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Thursday that it is keeping its eligibility rules intact for the S&P 500 and several other major indexes. Indexes are benchmarks that track specific slices of the stock market. The best known is the S&P 500, which tracks 500 of the largest publicly traded companies in the United States. Many index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) hold stocks that mirror these benchmarks in an effort to replicate their performance. These funds are a key part of many 401(k)s, pension funds, and retirement accounts. Earlier this year, S&P Dow Jones Indices said it was considering whether to alter its rules to fast-track companies with massive market capitalizations, the total value of a company’s shares held by investors. The proposed changes would have applied to companies like SpaceX and potentially other future blockbuster IPOs such as Anthropic or OpenAI. S&P Dow Jones Indices said it consulted with players across Wall Street before making its decision.
“S&P DJI determined that exceptions to the financial viability, seasoning, and IWF [investable weight factor] requirements should not be granted solely based on market capitalization,” the company said in a press release. That means the earliest SpaceX could be added to the S&P 500 is likely June 2027, assuming it does go public this month. Aside from being traded on the stock market for at least a year, SpaceX will also have to be profitable in its most recent quarter and over the sum of its four most recent quarters.
