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Was The SpaceX IPO A Success?
It isn’t a simple yes-or-no question.
SpaceX’s IPO was always going to be a wild, erratic and chaotic ride. That is why I have waited so long to comment on it. Due to the obviously BS nature of SpaceX’s business plan and the rigged way the IPO was launched, it was anyone’s guess as to what would happen. . You might think that because Elon Musk is now comfortably the most grotesquely greedy man alive — sorry, I mean, the world’s first trillionaire — that this IPO was a success. After all, the pathetic man got the hollow title he desperately craved so that he could feel something. But now, a few weeks down the line, we can see that this IPO is actually quite a mixed bag.
So, let’s start with a positive point. It was a success because SpaceX managed to sell its shares at a $1.77 trillion valuation, raising just over $85 billion, which is $10 billion more than they targeted. That makes this by far the largest IPO in history. The fact that they were able to pull this off is objectively impressive — particularly when you realise that many analysts claimed SpaceX was worth half of this colossal figure.
But this IPO was heavily engineered. SpaceX only floated 5% of its stock, with 70% of that reserved for retail investors, and many brokers heavily reduced the barrier to entry to buy the IPO. That means the supply was greatly…
