Instant Reaction: SpaceX Jumps in First Trades Following Record $75 Billion IPO

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This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg. Instant reaction and analysis from our 3,000 journalists and analysts around the world.

**Kailey Leinz** (0:19)
I'm Kailey Leinz in Washington, but clearly all eyes are on New York today. A SpaceX launches into public markets, a record setting IPO of $75 billion, priced at $135 a share. The stock opens on the NASDAQ 11% higher than that at $150. And as we speak down at the NASDAQ where this trading got underway, we find Bloomberg's Yahaira Anand, who we'll check in with in just a moment as we consider it raised $75 billion in that initial offering, valuing the company at just about $1.8 trillion. That valuation, that market cap, obviously significantly higher with the gain we are seeing today north of $2 trillion. So let's go to Yahaira now at the NASDAQ for more. So Yahaira, obviously we're setting records here. What is the vibe like at the NASDAQ right now? It seems everything in this process has gone pretty smoothly.

**Yahaira Anand** (1:06)
Yeah, pretty smoothly for the biggest IPO we've ever seen. I will say the excitement, especially in the last hour as we were getting closer to trading was palpable. You felt it here at the NASDAQ. They are all scrambling, making sure it all went off without a hitch. And then outside, you have all the Musk fans gathering, hoping to get a glimpse of him. But as you and I know, he was over in Texas. But as you said, SpaceX has officially begun trading and with the stock opening at $150 a share above its $135 IPO price. And that gave investors an immediate gain of roughly 11%.
But now you said it is trading above that. But this value is a company at approximately just under $2 trillion, as you said, Kailey. But it instantly put SpaceX among the most valuable companies in the world. More valuable than Tesla itself, of course, another Elon Musk owned company, Metta and even Saudi Aramco.

**Kailey Leinz** (2:10)
All right, Bloomberg's Yahaira Anand live at the NASDAQ as SpaceX debuts. Thank you so much. So let's get more on this as we turn to Craig Trudell, our managing editor of Global Business Americas here at Bloomberg and Craig. Obviously, while you hold that title now, you also led for a long time Bloomberg's autos coverage. You are very familiar with Elon Musk as the CEO of Tesla, which obviously while being an auto company first and foremost, also in financial markets and public markets was the way to bet on Elon Musk. We now have a second channel for those bets in SpaceX. Whether or not these two get rolled together at some point, I'm not sure. But your reaction, please, to the appetite we are seeing for SpaceX as it debuts today.

**Craig Trudell** (2:52)
Yeah, I think it's fascinating to see a strong debut for SpaceX, a rotation maybe a little bit out of Tesla, which is something that we were really braced for, but not anything disastrous. I mean, we've seen on an intraday basis, the stock fall about 3 percent. But as of this moment, it's a little less than that, about 2.8.
This is a company that has been quite volatile over the years in its own right. And if that track record applies to SpaceX, then we should be in for a bumpy ride here.

**Kailey Leinz** (3:30)
Well, certainly. So it's still Elon Musk that we're talking about, a visionary maybe, but a lot of volatility we know can come with that. Walk us through the unique nature of the way this IPO happened, the idea that this price was set, it wasn't your typical price discovery. Musk said the price is $135 of a share, he got that and obviously, investors are buying this stock for more than that as trading gets going here. But how should we consider the way in which the valuation for this company was set? We were just listening to Jim Chaino's talking about how skeptical he is of valuing a market cap at something 110 times revenue for a company that isn't profitable.

**Craig Trudell** (4:13)
Yeah, I think it's fascinating in that this is also a company that put out incredible numbers in their S1 about total addressable markets and talking about space-based economy. To hear Musk talk about the potential for this company, and to hear people like Jared Isaacman, the head of NASA, he gave an interview very recently about this notion that the space economy has been something that's been sort of highly speculated about, hyped up as something massive, and yet the follow-through has been very minimal. I will say in defense of Musk and SpaceX, with the exception of Starlink, there's been very little in the way of progress toward making any money in space. We have seen SpaceX make progress where others haven't, but I think where you really run into trouble looking at this company is actually the AI portion.