SpaceX stock opened at $150 a share on Friday, which was an 11% increase from its IPO price, and closed 20% higher for the day.
The rocket and satellite company priced its IPO at $135 a share, and offered 555.6 million shares for $75 billion raised. Underwriters still have the option to sell additional shares if demand outpaces the initial allotment, with 83 million shares in the stash.
Reports indicate SpaceX had retail orders of over $100 billion, as the company targeted a retail allocation of around 30% of its shares.
Data from Vanda Research shows the strong interest from retail investors.
“SPCX is now the most bought stock by retail investors today, and its not even a competition – with net buying running at more than 3.5x that of NVDA,” the company said in a research note. “Retail turnover has already reached $453mn, representing roughly 4% of all single-stock retail turnover today. Unsurprisingly, SpaceX is on track to become the biggest IPO debut for retail investors in recent history.”
The demand for SpaceX was strong as IPO shares ran four times oversubscribed. Most of this demand though is inflated by institutional investors to make sure they have enough stock for their clients.
SpaceX’s historic IPO clears the path for Anthropic and OpenAI as the two have filed IPO documents with the SEC. Harrison Rolfes, senior research analyst at PitchBook said “Demand was the only question, and SpaceX just answered it.”
This moment also serves as validation in the space industry, it’s an investable and profitable industry now.
