SpaceX: An extraterrestrial IPO on the horizon
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Space stocks have skyrocketed
Space stocks have skyrocketed in recent weeks as investor interest in SpaceX’s upcoming IPO continues to grow. The anticipated IPO of the world’s best-known space company has also fueled demand for space industry stocks already trading on the market. Due to limited supply, the influx of capital is concentrated on a small number of stocks, resulting in rapid and significant price increases. However, this could be a double-edged sword, as if SpaceX’s debut fails to clear the high bar set for it, disappointment could easily spread to the entire sector. In our analysis, we present three space industry players already listed on the stock market.
Elon Musk is trying to sell investors a story that encompasses rockets, satellite internet, artificial intelligence, and a Mars expedition all at once. SpaceX’s IPO could be the largest stock market debut of all time, but based on the prospectus released to the public, investors aren’t getting a traditional aerospace company. Alongside the profitable Starlink, they’ll also get the capital-intensive Starship development and xAI’s currently massively loss-making but potentially high-value AI story.
OTP Bank will not participate in SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO), clients will only be able to trade after the listing.
Elon Musk is bringing a story to the stock market that, at first glance, seems too big to be understood within the framework of traditional fundamnetal analysis. SpaceX released its IPO prospectus recently, kicking off a process that could lead to the largest IPO of all time. The offering is expected to be worth as much as $75 billion, with a valuation of around $1.75 trillion.
The investor roadshow is expected to take place around June 4, followed by the share pricing on June 11, with the first day of trading on the Nasdaq likely to be June 12. Of course, this date is not set in stone, as the transaction could still be delayed for a variety of reasons.
Unusual lock-up structure
In most IPOs, early investors and employees are typically prohibited from selling their shares for 180 days to prevent the supply of shares from immediately depressing the price of the newly listed stock. SpaceX, however, employs an unusual, staggered lock-up structure: certain shareholders can sell shares well before the 180-day deadline, in several phases. After the Q2 earnings report, up to 20% of the shares subject to the lock-up may become sellable, and if the stock is trading at least 30% above the IPO price by then, an additional 10% may be released.
Following this, there will be five additional tranches: on the 70th, 90th, 105th, 120th, and 135th days after the IPO, additional blocks of 7% each may become available for sale. Then, following the Q3 earnings report, an additional 28% may be released. The remaining shares will be released from the lock-up at the standard 180-day mark. It is important to note that Elon Musk is not participating in this early sale mechanism.
One reason for this structure is that, based on the planned $75 billion offering and a valuation of $1.75 trillion, the initial free float would be only around 4.3%, which is extremely low for a company of this size. This approach, however, allows for a gradual increase in the number of tradable shares.
This is necessary to ensure that SpaceX stock can be included in the Nasdaq 100 index as quickly as possible. The previous waiting period of at least three months has been changed, and under the new rules, a newly listed company with very high market capitalization can be included in the index after as few as 15 trading days if its market value places it among the top tier of current Nasdaq 100 members. In addition, the 10% minimum free-float requirement has also been eliminated.
Inclusion in the index at an early stage could generate additional demand from passive index funds, which could support the share price but also make it easier for early investors and employees to sell their shares. This could be a cause for concern in that early owners could realize their massive gains much faster than usual, which could be financed by new retail investors and index-tracking funds.
The black box has been opened
Until now, we could only speculate about SpaceX’s recent financial performance, but now we have the key figures. These show that the company’s profit center is Starlink, which has accounted for more than 60% of revenue recently, with a high EBITDA margin of 63–64%. At the end of March, the company reported 10.3 million Starlink subscribers, while more than 9,600 Starlink satellites were orbiting in low Earth orbit.
SpaceX’s traditional space business generated $4.1 billion in revenue in 2025, but it posted a net loss because the company still needs to spend a great deal of money on investments and development. The long-term goal is a Mars expedition and the establishment of a permanent human colony there. This may sound like science fiction right now, but Elon Musk is highly motivated, as his stock option plan is tied to this milestone, as well as to the company’s market capitalization reaching $7.5 trillion.
A less distant but equally ambitious goal is to deploy data centers into Earth orbit, where they would be powered by solar energy, thereby reducing operating costs. SpaceX aims to begin deploying data centers into space as early as 2028. However, experts say this target date seems premature, as launch costs remain extremely high, and factors such as exposure to extreme radiation and the need to properly manage high temperatures also significantly limit feasibility at this stage.
The most controversial aspect of the company is the integration of xAI and X. In February 2026, SpaceX merged with Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, which had previously acquired X, formerly known as Twitter. Investors are thus not getting a purely space and satellite communications company, but rather a conglomerate in which AI also plays a central role. The numbers here are far less encouraging. The AI segment generated $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, while its operating loss was $6.4 billion. The investment requirements are also massive: AI-related capex was $12.7 billion in 2025 and $7.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026, and is expected to remain high in the coming quarters.
Satellites, spacecraft, artificial intelligence
SpaceX’s operations can be divided into three business segments. Starlink is a satellite internet service that provides broadband internet almost anywhere in the world via a network of satellites orbiting in low Earth orbit (LEO). The constellation consists of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit. This allows for the rapid deployment of broadband internet in areas where building a terrestrial network is expensive, slow, or uneconomical. These may include rural, sparsely populated areas, remote industrial sites (e.g., mines, oil rigs), ships, or aircraft.
The Space Division is responsible for rocket launches (e.g., Falcon 9), spaceflight systems, NASA and defense contracts, and the development of Starship. The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets form the backbone of SpaceX’s current launch operations. The reusability of the Falcon 9 was the technological breakthrough that set SpaceX apart from traditional space industry providers. The repeated use of the rocket has radically improved launch cost-effectiveness. Starship is the latest key project, a completely new, high-capacity (capable of carrying up to 100 tons of payload), reusable rocket system designed to drastically reduce the unit cost of reaching space. According to the prospectus, SpaceX has already spent more than $15 billion on its development.
SpaceX’s AI division includes xAI, the Grok AI model, and the X platform. The division’s revenue comes from multiple sources: Grok and X subscriptions, data licensing, advertising revenue, and, increasingly, the sale of AI infrastructure and computing capacity. Musk does not want to build a standalone AI chatbot, but rather a physical and digital infrastructure in which computing capacity, energy, data, models, and—in the long term—even space-based infrastructure are all part of a single ecosystem. According to the narrative in SpaceX’s prospectus, the leading position in the AI race can be secured by those players who can rapidly scale computing capacity and control the entire physical infrastructure. Building this, however, consumes enormous sums of money.
A central component of SpaceX’s AI strategy is its proprietary computing infrastructure. According to reports, xAI’s Colossus and Colossus II data centers collectively provide approximately 1 gigawatt of computing capacity, and the company aims to scale up Grok’s next-generation models to “trillions of parameters.” The most interesting recent news in the AI sector was the compute agreement recently signed with Anthropic. According to PitchBook, Anthropic could pay $1.25 billion per month to use SpaceX’s Colossus data center capacity through 2029, though the agreement does include a 90-day termination option for both parties.
When Wall Street tries to price Mars
It is difficult to evaluate the company using traditional metrics, and its success will not be determined by its stock market debut. In any case, based on the 2025 revenue and EBITDA figures, as well as the targeted valuation level, a P/S ratio of 93 and an EV/EBITDA ratio of 266 are calculated. Perhaps it goes without saying that these are very high numbers. (Since the company currently has approximately $13.2 billion in net debt, the EV and market capitalization (P) do not differ significantly at this scale.)
The combination of Elon Musk, AI, and the space industry could generate enough hype to make the SpaceX IPO the biggest stock market event of the year. It could also demonstrate just how much demand there is for such a growth story in the capital markets right now — that is, how willing investors are to take on risk.
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