| By Mike Gruss
Last week, SpaceX's chief financial officer shed more light on plans for an initial public offering in 2026 or 2027.
In a message to employees late Dec. 12, Bret Johnsen said the company is considering an IPO next year to raise money for lunar and Mars missions as well as orbital data centers, SpaceNews' Jeff Foust reported.
Johnsen wrote that "a public offering could raise a significant amount of capital that enables us to ramp Starship to an insane flight rate, deploy AI data centers in space, build Moonbase Alpha and send uncrewed and crewed missions to Mars."
A few thoughts:
1. If this were to happen, the numbers would be staggering.
Early reports are of a market capitalization of $1.5 trillion, that it may be the largest IPO of all time and that it would be one of the 10 largest publicly traded stocks of all time.
"We hear interest from investors on a regular basis looking for access to the stock," said Andrew Chanin, co-founder and chief executive of ProcureAM, which manages the Procure Space ETF, an exchange-traded fund focused on space industry companies. "This is something many retail and institutional investors have been interested in for a while."
What's driving that value? SpaceNews' Jason Rainbow recently wrote two intelligence briefings on SpaceX's role in the space economy. SpaceX already operates at a scale no launch competitor can match (part 1). If SpaceX went public tomorrow, investors wouldn't just be buying rockets – any serious SpaceX IPO discussion starts and ends with Starlink (part 2).
They're both comprehensive (and free to download) and will give you a full understanding of where SpaceX is and how the company overshadows nearly every element of space.
2. The ripple effects for the space industry could be substantial.
Jason wrote about how other space companies are likely to move toward the public markets, hoping to ride the wave of momentum behind a potentially record-breaking listing.
A SpaceX IPO "would be a seismic event for the space economy," said Mark Boggett, CEO of early-stage investor Seraphim Space.
"SpaceX has been at the forefront of the transformation of the space sector that has now spawned a thriving ecosystem of many thousands of other space start-ups and scale-ups around the world," he said via email.
3. The idea of a SpaceX IPO has been part of the conversation surrounding the company for … a very long time.
A close reading of Jeff's story shows Johnsen is "preparing" for an IPO, and that when such an offering would take place is "highly uncertain." There's good reason this could feel familiar.
A short timeline, with the help of the SpaceNews archive:
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In 2022, SpaceX said it was unlikely to offer shares in its broadband company Starlink to the public until 2025 or later. -
In 2021, Musk tweeted "Once we can predict cash flow reasonably well, Starlink will IPO." -
In a 2018 CNBC interview SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said, "at a minimum, we can't go public until we're flying regularly to Mars."
I found an interview with Musk with SpaceNews from 2011 that included a relevant question:
SN: Do you expect to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX stock by the end of next year?
Musk: With IPOs, there are all sorts of complications that can arise. Although we won't need to sell much; we don't need to raise money. It might be wise to raise money just to make sure — let's say we have a series of launch failures or something drastic that takes out a good chunk of the launch pad. I think there's a good chance we'll do an IPO late next year. If it's not next year the worst-case scenario would be the year after.
And IPO aside, SpaceX continues to make a lot of news. The company reported a close approach between a Starlink satellite and a recently launched Chinese spacecraft. In addition, NASA said it plans to test SpaceX's Starshield satellite network, designed primarily for national security customers, to support operations of the agency's Deep Space Network.
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