By Niket Nishant, Johann M Cherian and Akash Sriram
July 15 (Reuters) –
SpaceX shares dropped below their initial public offering price for the first time on Wednesday, just over a month after the rockets-to-AI firm completed the biggest IPO ever and made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
The shares slid 1.5% to $134, falling below the $135 IPO price and well below last month’s high that briefly propelled the company’s market valuation above those of Silicon Valley giants Microsoft and Amazon, firms with longer public track records and stronger financial results.
If the decline sticks, it will leave investors who bought into SpaceX at the IPO price sitting on paper losses for the first time. It’s the latest reminder that Wall Street’s enthusiasm can cool quickly, even for a company whose giant ambitions and Musk backing briefly helped it fetch a valuation above $2.6 trillion last month, compared with $1.75 trillion on Wednesday afternoon.
“I think the elephant in the room is there’s a lot of folks that are in the stock and maybe some of them or a good number of them are wanting to take some liquidity, which is essentially putting a lot of pressure on the stock,” said Justus Parmar, CEO of SpaceX investor Fortuna Investments. “You’re probably seeing a little bit of it and through the course of the year, we’ll be seeing more of that.”
The about-face in SpaceX reflects in part investor concern over debt-funded AI spending and what potential Federal Reserve rate hikes might do to stretched tech valuations. SpaceX turned to the bond market last month to raise $25 billion, becoming the latest tech giant to sell bonds to build out costly technology infrastructure whose return prospects are hotly debated on Wall Street.
The stock’s retreat “seems to be a combination of profit-taking, valuation reassessment and the unwinding of extremely bullish positioning following one of the most anticipated listings in recent years,” said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.
It is not uncommon for a stock to fall below the IPO price, especially during periods of broader market stress. Still, the drop could bolster critics who have argued that SpaceX’s valuation was stretched, given that it lost $4.9 billion last year and many of its ambitions are untested.
“There hasn’t been anything lately to remind people of some of the catalysts for why they bought SpaceX,” said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers. “The fact that a stock has fallen a couple of dollars below its IPO price in itself is not a tragedy, but SpaceX is heavily watched and has an important role in investor psyche.”
The stock’s addition to indexes such as the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 didn’t reverse the retreat. SpaceX’s shares have dropped some 13% since they were included in the Nasdaq 100.
Investor focus will shift to the company’s first results after listing. Analysts expect the report to happen in the first week of August. After the report, the first phase of the IPO lock-up period is set to expire, allowing eligible employees and some early shareholders to begin selling portions of their holdings, an event that analysts say could weigh further on the stock.
Investors are also closely watching the company’s 13th Starship test flight as the rocket’s successful development is critical to lowering launch costs and enabling many of its most ambitious long-term projects, including orbital data centers and lunar missions.
“We’re really on maybe 30 days or so into this experiment, still so very early,” said Parmar. “The big thing is Elon got his $85 billion to take SpaceX to the next level of growth, which will take many years to see how that plays out. Not 30 days of trading.”
(Reporting by Niket Nishant, Shashwat Chauhan, Johann M Cherian, Akash Sriram and Avinash P in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Pooja Desai, Colin Barr and Nick Zieminski)
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