SpaceX falls under IPO price, as lockup expirations loom
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SpaceX closed below its IPO price Thursday after the stock declined for the eighth time in nine sessions.
Why it matters: The selloff suggests that investors' knees have gone somewhat wobbly, as the first restrictions on selling — known as lockups — are set to be lifted in less than a month.
The latest: The stock closed at $131.11 Thursday.
- That's down 42% from its intraday high of $225.64 reached on June 16.
- It's also below the stock's symbolically important $135 offering price.
Zoom in: According to SEC filings, up to 1.37 billion shares could hit the market starting in the days after SpaceX reports second-quarter results, which is projected to be on Aug. 6, according to FactSet.
- That includes 911.5 million of class A common shares.
- And it could include an additional 455.8 million shares if the stock price meets certain conditions. (The shares would have to close at or above $175.50 on a certain number of trading days surrounding the Q2 earnings release.)
Reality check: The actual SpaceX IPO — the largest ever, raising $86 billion — involved the sale of only 639 million shares.
- That means the first lockup expiration could roughly quadruple the supply of tradable SpaceX shares.
The intrigue: Will the buying public be eager to buy them? Especially after the recent drop?
Between the lines: The SpaceX IPO last month was a masterpiece of financial engineering.
- SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was able to generate a surge of retail interest.
- The company was also fast-tracked into some key indexes, like the Nasdaq 100, ensuring some steady purchases from index-based investors.
- Those factors, along with a surge of online hype and a relatively constrained amount of stock to sell — about 5% of all SpaceX shares — generated more than a satisfying pop in the price.
- At its closing high, the company was valued at $2.64 trillion, on paper.
Yes, but: That valuation always deserved to be viewed pretty skeptically.
- All things being equal, the constrained supply of stock in the face of strong demand results in an elevated price and a potential overvaluation of the company.
The bottom line: As more SpaceX shares are released into the wild, we'll get a more accurate picture of what the market thinks SpaceX's "true value" is.
