SpaceX is just days away from making history on Wall Street.
According to Bloomberg, the initial public offering (IPO) is now thoroughly oversubscribed, with several large institutional investors each placing orders worth around $10 billion or more. The strong demand comes just days before the Elon Musk-led company is expected to begin trading publicly.
Banks handling the offering are expected to stop accepting orders from institutional investors on Wednesday after US markets close at 4 pm in New York. The information has not been made public yet.
According to Reuters, the offering is currently about two times oversubscribed, with investor demand already reaching around $150 billion. That is double the amount of stock being offered in the deal, which is seeking to raise $75 billion.
SpaceX IPO – Final countdown before pricing
With the order books closing on Wednesday, attention now shifts to the banks managing the sale.
After markets close, underwriters will determine the final share price and decide how many shares each investor will receive. The pricing is expected to be finalised on June 11, while trading under the ticker symbol SPCX is scheduled to begin on the Nasdaq from June 12.
SpaceX is offering 555.6 million shares at a fixed price of $135 each. If the sale goes as planned, the company will raise about $75 billion and secure a valuation of roughly $1.8 trillion.
That would make it one of the most valuable companies ever to enter the public markets. The company first filed for the IPO last month, and the process has moved quickly since then.
Elon Musk will continue to maintain firm control over the company after it goes public. According to the filing, Musk has locked up his entire stake for more than a year, meaning he will not be able to sell those shares during that period.
Retail investors still have a chance
While institutional investors face a Wednesday deadline, retail investors have a little more time. Bloomberg previously reported that some trading platforms will continue accepting orders from individual investors even after institutional books close.
SpaceX is also reserving a significant portion of the offering for everyday investors. Up to 30% of the IPO has been set aside for retail participation, allowing smaller investors to buy into the company alongside major Wall Street firms.
What it means when order books close
Before a company goes public, large investors such as mutual funds, pension funds and investment firms submit requests for shares through a process known as book-building.
The order book keeps track of how many shares investors want to buy and at what price.
Once the books close, banks stop accepting new orders and calculate total demand. They then decide the final IPO price and allocate shares among investors. Because demand has been so strong, many investors are expected to receive fewer shares than they originally requested.
Set to become the biggest IPO ever
If SpaceX succeeds in raising $75 billion, it would comfortably surpass the previous record set by Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco, which raised $29.4 billion during its 2019 stock market debut.
Last Friday, SpaceX announced a major agreement with Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Under the deal, Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence division will pay SpaceX $920 million every month as part of a cloud services agreement that will run through 2029.
The company had previously revealed a similar partnership with AI startup Anthropic. These agreements have helped strengthen investor confidence ahead of the IPO and have become an important part of the company’s pitch to the market.
Disclaimer: Information in this article is based on pre-IPO reports and market sources. Final pricing, allocations and demand figures may change before SpaceX’s shares begin trading.
