Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / Why SpaceX is rocketing toward largest IPO in stock market history
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, will be
- 0:03Speaker 1: going public on Friday and is expected to become the
- 0:07Speaker 1: largest initial public offering, or IPO in stock market history
- 0:11Speaker 1: with the sale of more than five hundred and fifty
- 0:14Speaker 1: five million shares. Musk and the company are looking to
- 0:17Speaker 1: raise roughly seventy five billion dollars that would raise the
- 0:20Speaker 1: company's valuation to about one point seven trillion dollars, automatically
- 0:25Speaker 1: making it the world's most valuable publicly traded company. Nasdaq
- 0:29Speaker 1: and larger index funds will also allow trading and investing
- 0:33Speaker 1: in this company much earlier than normal. Within three weeks,
- 0:36Speaker 1: individual investors alone have already requested more than seventy billion
- 0:41Speaker 1: dollars worth of shares. There are lots of questions about
- 0:44Speaker 1: all of this, and for more. We are joined now
- 0:46Speaker 1: by Ron and Sana ms now, senior business analyst and
- 0:50Speaker 1: author of the Message of the Markets on substack. Ron,
- 0:53Speaker 1: It's always good to see you, especially on a day
- 0:56Speaker 1: like this as we await this IPO. What is it
- 0:59Speaker 1: about space that investors are willing to value it at
- 1:03Speaker 1: a level we've never seen before.
- 1:06Speaker 2: Well, I think to give Elon Musk a great deal
- 1:08Speaker 2: of credit for being an innovator and a business genius,
- 1:11Speaker 2: if you will, you know, having taken over Tesla in
- 1:13Speaker 2: its early days, having built out Starlink, which is one
- 1:16Speaker 2: of the key components of SpaceX, going public, and having
- 1:20Speaker 2: very successfully you know, built and launched rockets into space
- 1:24Speaker 2: at a fraction of the cost that we've seen others
- 1:27Speaker 2: either attempt in the private sector or even you know,
- 1:30Speaker 2: in government operations as well. So they're banking on his
- 1:33Speaker 2: vision of the future where we're going to have data
- 1:35Speaker 2: centers in space that will provide power for artificial intelligence operations,
- 1:39Speaker 2: and hoping that that he can grow into that one
- 1:43Speaker 2: point seven trillion dollar valuation, which might actually be larger
- 1:46Speaker 2: tomorrow once the stock starts to trade and deliver the
- 1:49Speaker 2: types of revenues and profits that would support evaluation that high.
- 1:53Speaker 1: Well, right after reading the prospectus, my question to you was,
- 1:57Speaker 1: are investors buying the company as it exists today or
- 2:02Speaker 1: a vision of what it could become? And at what
- 2:04Speaker 1: point does optimism just become speculation.
- 2:08Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think the two go hand in hand,
- 2:09Speaker 2: and they are certainly buying the vision, they are not
- 2:12Speaker 2: buying the company as it exists today. With about eighteen
- 2:15Speaker 2: billion dollars in revenue and last year lost about four
- 2:17Speaker 2: point two billion dollars from operations. So no, this is
- 2:21Speaker 2: not the type of company if you look at it
- 2:23Speaker 2: from an earnings perspective, that you would accord on one
- 2:26Speaker 2: point seven trillion dollar valuation.
- 2:28Speaker 3: They're hoping that they can grow into that number.
- 2:30Speaker 2: As some other companies have Obviously, whether it's Microsoft or
- 2:34Speaker 2: whether it's a Google's parent alphabet in Vidia, that's happened
- 2:38Speaker 2: over an extremely long period of time. This is happening
- 2:41Speaker 2: much more quickly. There are concerns, of course, that this
- 2:43Speaker 2: is part of a speculative frenzy that's going on with
- 2:47Speaker 2: anything associated with artificial intelligence, and that the valuation on this,
- 2:52Speaker 2: which you know, when taken in some is larger than
- 2:55Speaker 2: the market valuation of all the IPOs I believe we've
- 2:58Speaker 2: seen since the year two thousand. Visit a very big deal,
- 3:01Speaker 2: and people are going to make their bets and see
- 3:04Speaker 2: whether or not in the long run that vision will
- 3:06Speaker 2: be fulfilled.
- 3:07Speaker 1: Well, right on your substack and on your TikTok videos.
- 3:09Speaker 1: You've been warning retail investors to be careful. What should
- 3:13Speaker 1: regular investors know, especially folks who are interested in buying
- 3:17Speaker 1: shares or at least trying to get shares well.
- 3:20Speaker 2: If they've already gotten an allocation, they've gotten that allocation
- 3:23Speaker 2: at the price of one hundred and thirty five dollars,
- 3:25Speaker 2: which was set officially today.
- 3:28Speaker 3: What often happens, and we've seen this.
- 3:30Speaker 2: The chief investment officer at Truist pointed out that you know,
- 3:33Speaker 2: from the top price that you see early in initial
- 3:36Speaker 2: public offering for hotstocks like this, whether it was Meta
- 3:39Speaker 2: or Ali Baba or some of the other big tech
- 3:41Speaker 2: names that we know, a year later those stocks were
- 3:44Speaker 2: down on average about fifty five percent. So you know,
- 3:47Speaker 2: there are some restrictions on flipping for individual investors, which means,
- 3:51Speaker 2: you know, buying it and selling it immediately after the IPO,
- 3:55Speaker 2: but they should be prepared for a fair amount of volatility.
- 3:58Speaker 2: Unless you see the surge and revenues surge and profitability
- 4:03Speaker 2: at SpaceX that would support the valuation that may exceed
- 4:07Speaker 2: two trillion dollars tomorrow. We're not quite sure exactly where
- 4:10Speaker 2: it's going to open. Some estimates are as high as
- 4:12Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty five dollars a share, which would
- 4:15Speaker 2: provide individuals with the instant profit. Remember also there are
- 4:18Speaker 2: a lot of early investors who are taking profits from
- 4:21Speaker 2: their initial investments in SpaceX and the other components of
- 4:25Speaker 2: that company, They too are exiting, So you don't want
- 4:28Speaker 2: to be the bag folder if indeed this does not.
- 4:31Speaker 3: Live up to its expectations.
- 4:33Speaker 1: Meantime, Open AI and Anthropic are also preparing to go public.
- 4:37Speaker 1: Are we witnessing the beginning of a new AI investment
- 4:40Speaker 1: cycle similar to previous technology booms or is this something
- 4:44Speaker 1: else entirely.
- 4:45Speaker 2: Well, I think we're in the middle of one, and again,
- 4:48Speaker 2: this already dwarfs kind of the capital requirements that we
- 4:53Speaker 2: saw even in the build out of the railroads in
- 4:56Speaker 2: the eighteen seventies in the United States.
- 4:58Speaker 3: This is the enormous capital commitment.
- 5:00Speaker 2: At least this year alone, we'll see about eight hundred
- 5:03Speaker 2: billion dollars put to work for data centers and other
- 5:06Speaker 2: AI infrastructure necessities. Some are estimating that we can see
- 5:10Speaker 2: a trillion dollars spent next year. Now whether or not
- 5:13Speaker 2: that comes to pass remains to be seen. The one
- 5:15Speaker 2: caveat i'd put on this is that it's not just
- 5:18Speaker 2: these companies selling equity in their firms to raise money.
- 5:21Speaker 2: They're also using a fair amount of debt, which, again,
- 5:25Speaker 2: if the companies don't live up to their profit revenue expectations,
- 5:28Speaker 2: we could see a financial market event down the road
- 5:31Speaker 2: if they cannot service that debt or if they don't
- 5:34Speaker 2: need earnings expectations, that could harm their stocks rather significantly.
- 5:38Speaker 2: So I think individuals really need to do some serious
- 5:41Speaker 2: homework around this and make sure that they're not in
- 5:44Speaker 2: the midst of an investing mania and instead making very
- 5:47Speaker 2: rational decisions about how much money they allocate to these
- 5:50Speaker 2: AI plays.
- 5:52Speaker 1: Ron Insana ms now, senior business analyst and the author
- 5:55Speaker 1: of the Message of the Markets on substack.
- 5:58Speaker 3: Ron always a pleasure, Take care same chef.
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