SpaceX publicly set a $135 price for shares in its initial public offering on Wednesday, upending the longstanding Wall Street price-discovery apparatus and underscoring Elon Musk’s determination to raise record sums his way.
The company’s decision to publish a price a week ahead of its landmark offering has few if any precedents among major US IPOs, and reflects Musk’s standing in the financial world as an adventurer with a golden touch.
SpaceX’s amended IPO filing confirms a Reuters report on the $135 price from earlier this week. The company is aiming to raise $75 billion, the most ever for an IPO, in a deal that would value it at $1.75 trillion, immediately placing it among the top 10 most valuable US-listed firms.
The company will kick off an investor roadshow on Thursday, with pricing expected on June 11; trading in shares will begin on the Nasdaq the next day.
Musk has rewritten the IPO playbook for SpaceX in many other ways, from planning to give retail investors a larger role in allocations to pushing for early index inclusion, and structuring governance to preserve strong founder control.
“Nothing about this IPO is normal in any course or sense, but then again this is the largest IPO in history so maybe that is not surprising,” said an investor who is planning on buying into the IPO.
Taking it on the road
The road show is where companies and their bankers typically sound out investors in order to arrive at a price range for their share sale. The process emphasizes bankers’ relationships with potential investors and their understanding of the market for the coming offering.
After a series of testing-the-waters meetings with investors ahead of the roadshow, SpaceX indicated it was looking for a valuation of about $1.75 trillion, while some investors sought $1.5 trillion or less. The company’s plans, including the size of the raise, are subject to change as the next round of investor meetings gets underway, sources told Reuters.
On Wall Street, there has been a rush to get a piece of the deal, given Musk’s reputation and his control of an offering that stands to generate millions of dollars in fees. The prospective investor said there has been a sense that major firms are “posturing” by saying “we put the money in early” — a position that both reflects and reaffirms Musk’s leverage over investors.
Other aspects of the SpaceX offering stand out. Major international banks including Mizuho, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Barclays, have been urged to focus on lining up wealthy individual buyers in their home countries. In the past, little attention was paid to individual investors, as bankers sought out feedback from large asset managers such as Fidelity Investments and powerful hedge funds such as Citadel.
Reuters previously reported that the company is considering allocating as much as 30% of the offering to individual investors, an unusually large retail tranche aimed at tapping into Musk’s cult-like following that would also broaden ownership of the company.
