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IPO Ceilings and The Trillion Dollar Question · She's On The Money

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  Speaker 1: She's on the money. She's on the money.
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  Speaker 2: My name's Natasha Bamblett. I'm a proud First Nations woman,
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  Speaker 2: you see. She's On The Money podcast acknowledges culture, country, community,
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  Speaker 1: Hello, my friends, and welcome to She's On The Money,
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  Speaker 1: the podcast where we discuss all of the issues concerning
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  Speaker 1: your wealth goals so that you can feel more confident
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  Speaker 1: with your financial future. And that includes any investment milestones
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  Speaker 1: along the way. I'm Victoria Devine, and you are joining
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  Speaker 1: me for a very special solo episode dedicated to IPOs,
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  Speaker 1: because frankly, they've been dominating the headlines and our DMs.
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  Speaker 1: You might have noticed that there is a lot of
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  Speaker 1: buzz going on around SpaceX going public in June, but
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  Speaker 1: I don't think that the share market's quite done yet,
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  Speaker 1: with a few more mega valuations up its sleeve for
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  Speaker 1: the rest of financial year 2027. While Bec and I
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  Speaker 1: did cover IPOs in 2024, this week I'm bringing you
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  Speaker 1: a recap to help you better understand IPOs in today's
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  Speaker 1: investing landscape. And by the end of this episode, you'll
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  Speaker 1: understand what an IPO actually is, how to approach a
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  Speaker 1: valuation without analysis paralysis, how you'd even go about buying
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  Speaker 1: one if you wanted to, and most importantly, how to
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  Speaker 1: figure out whether any of this is actually right for you.
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  Speaker 1: After the break, we'll get into the cautionary tales and
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  Speaker 1: finish with how you actually approach this stuff based on
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  Speaker 1: your investing goals. So my friends, don't go anywhere. Welcome back,
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  Speaker 1: my friends. Now, I know IPOs have seemed like background
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  Speaker 1: noise for most of 2026, but as soon as SpaceX
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  Speaker 1: went public, suddenly everyone from Gina Reinhart to the group
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  Speaker 1: chat had an opinion. And for good reason, too. It
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  Speaker 1: was one of the biggest IPOs in history. We're talking
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  Speaker 1: about a debut valuation of around 1.75 trillion US dollars.
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  Speaker 1: But it didn't stop there. Off the back of that,
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  Speaker 1: both OpenAI, the company that's behind ChatGPT, and Anthropic, the
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  Speaker 1: company behind our friends at Claude, have now confidentially filed
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  Speaker 1: their own paperwork with the SEC to go public, too. Arguably,
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  Speaker 1: it looks like the two biggest names in tech are
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  Speaker 1: racing to list at the exact same time. Now, I
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  Speaker 1: know what you're thinking. Who filed first? Or at least
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  Speaker 1: that's what I'm thinking. And the answer is anthropic. On
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  Speaker 1: the 1st of June, off a fresh valuation of $ 965 billion.
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  Speaker 1: OpenAI listed a week later on the 8th of June.
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  Speaker 1: And depending on who you ask, the two of them
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  Speaker 1: could go public anywhere between October and sometime in 2027.
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  Speaker 1: But if they list within a week of one another,
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  Speaker 1: then why the big gap, you ask? Well, here's where
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  Speaker 1: it gets a little bit saucy. OpenAI has reportedly got
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  Speaker 1: a self-imposed flaw, as in, they don't want to list
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  Speaker 1: below a trillion dollar valuation, and market conditions need to
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  Speaker 1: support that. Anthropic, on the other hand, is racing to
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  Speaker 1: be the first, because in a two-horse race like this,
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  Speaker 1: whoever lists first effectively sets the price for the market
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  Speaker 1: users to judge the other one. And after the SpaceX
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  Speaker 1: price swing, you can imagine things are feeling a little bit,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know, volatile to say the least. And just
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  Speaker 1: to give you an idea of scale, analysts reckon that
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  Speaker 1: between SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI together, they could pull in
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  Speaker 1: over $ 200 billion out of public markets. $ 200 billion. For context,
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  Speaker 1: the entire US IPO market only raised about $ 45 billion
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  Speaker 1: in the entirety of 2025. As you can imagine, it's
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  Speaker 1: a genuinely big moment for markets. But let's go back
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  Speaker 1: to the basics for a second, because I think it's
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  Speaker 1: worth a refresher on what an IPO actually is. So
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  Speaker 1: to begin at the beginning, an IPO stands for Initial
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  Speaker 1: Public Offering. Before a company goes public, it's privately owned
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  Speaker 1: by its founders, employees, and maybe even a small group
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  Speaker 1: of private investors or venture capital firms. But when a
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  Speaker 1: company decides to list on the public exchange for the
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  Speaker 1: very first time, it's opening itself up to everyday investors
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  Speaker 1: like you and me, selling little slices of the business
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  Speaker 1: to people who really are interested. Now, you might be wondering,
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  Speaker 1: where do you actually go to buy one of these
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  Speaker 1: bad boys? Can I just buy them wherever I get
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  Speaker 1: my shares or ETFs? Well, kind of, with a few
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  Speaker 1: extra steps. SpaceX listed on the NASDAQ, which is the
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  Speaker 1: American exchange, not the ASX. Same goes for OpenAI and Anthropic,
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  Speaker 1: who are also expected to list in the US, which
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  Speaker 1: means you can't just go and buy it like a
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  Speaker 1: normal ASX stock if the platform you're using doesn't offer
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  Speaker 1: foreign exchanges. You need what's called an international shares account,
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  Speaker 1: which most of the big platforms offer as an add-on.
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  Speaker 1: Think Sharesies or Perla, that sort of thing. And because
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  Speaker 1: you're a foreign investor, you may need to complete something
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  Speaker 1: called a W-8-B-E-N form. Basically, it's a form which drops
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  Speaker 1: the US withholding tax on any dividend from 30% down
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  Speaker 1: to 15% thanks to an Australia-US tax treaty. Bit of
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  Speaker 1: a money win. While this doesn't really matter right now
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  Speaker 1: because something like SpaceX aren't actually paying a dividend, They're
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  Speaker 1: choosing to reinvest your money in its rockets and in AI.
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  Speaker 1: It is standard practice for any US shares account. Now,
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  Speaker 1: you might have read somewhere that people weren't getting the
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  Speaker 1: shares they'd, quote, applied for during the IPO recently. And
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  Speaker 1: this is because when a company first launches, there's usually
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  Speaker 1: a very small window where everyday people like us can
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  Speaker 1: apply for an allocation before the stock starts trading. For SpaceX,
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  Speaker 1: applications were brokered by certain firms and platforms and had
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  Speaker 1: to be in by a certain deadline with funds in
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  Speaker 1: your account ready to go. If you had missed that window,
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  Speaker 1: you had to wait for it to start trading on
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  Speaker 1: the exchange and buy it on one of the open
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  Speaker 1: markets at the live price, no matter what it was.
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  Speaker 1: All of this is really worth knowing because IPOs are
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  Speaker 1: often oversubscribed, which means that more people often apply than
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  Speaker 1: there are actually shares available. Even folks who did apply
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  Speaker 1: may have only received a partial allocation or none of
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  Speaker 1: it at all. So that's what it means when you
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  Speaker 1: read things like initial offering. Okay, so let's get a
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  Speaker 1: little bit practical. If you wanted to do your homework
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  Speaker 1: on one of these IPOs, where would you even begin?
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  Speaker 1: Our first stop is always prospectus. This is a legal
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  Speaker 1: document that lays everything out. The company's financials, risks, earnings,
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  Speaker 1: who owns what, and what it plans to do with
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  Speaker 1: the money raised during an IPO. While some of it
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  Speaker 1: is pretty dense, you don't need to read every page
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  Speaker 1: like you're a lawyer, but you should review the bits
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  Speaker 1: that actually matter to you. So things like revenue, whether
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  Speaker 1: the company is actually profitable or if it's losing money,
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  Speaker 1: and the risk factors section, which is basically a company
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  Speaker 1: telling you in writing all the ways that it might fail,
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  Speaker 1: which is low-key one of the most underrated sections of
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  Speaker 1: any prospectus. If you want to know what could go
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  Speaker 1: wrong with an investment, the company is going to tell
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  Speaker 1: you right there in black and white because they have to. Now,
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  Speaker 1: please go back to our original episode on IPOs if
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  Speaker 1: you want to learn more about PE ratios and PS ratios,
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  Speaker 1: the price to earnings ratio and price to sales ratios.
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  Speaker 1: I know they might sound really technical and overwhelming, but
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  Speaker 1: they're genuinely useful in assessing how valuable a stock might
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  Speaker 1: actually be for you. Once you've established those, you can
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  Speaker 1: then compare them to similar companies or companies within those
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  Speaker 1: industries to see how they rate. You can also quickly
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  Speaker 1: search what range a good PE ratio might be for
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  Speaker 1: a particular industry to get a really good benchmark indicator. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: now let's say you've assessed the IPO and you're ready
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  Speaker 1: to purchase. How does that actually work? There are generally
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  Speaker 1: a few stages to an offering. First, the company might
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  Speaker 1: go around to its underwriters pitching big institutional investors to
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  Speaker 1: gauge demand before the stock is even available to retail
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  Speaker 1: investors like you or I. The big dogs get first dibs.
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  Speaker 1: That's just how it works. Then comes the retail offer,
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  Speaker 1: which is the bit we can actually access, usually through
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  Speaker 1: a broker's IPO center or something similar. You'll see the
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  Speaker 1: offer documents, the prospectus, sometimes an indicative price range and
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  Speaker 1: deadline to apply if you have funds ready to go.
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  Speaker 1: Then the company prices the IPO, meaning the final share
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  Speaker 1: price is locked and loaded. Based on that roadshow demand
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  Speaker 1: and the stock starts trading on the exchange. If you
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  Speaker 1: applied and got an allocation, congrats my friend, you are
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  Speaker 1: now a shareholder. If you didn't or you missed the window,
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  Speaker 1: you can simply buy it on the open market from
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  Speaker 1: day one of trading like everybody else. And that first
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  Speaker 1: day of trading can be absolutely wild. SpaceX is the
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  Speaker 1: perfect case study for this. So let's get into exactly
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  Speaker 1: what happened there after the break. Some people are calling
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  Speaker 1: it a really big price swing. I'm calling it what
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  Speaker 1: it is, absolutely wild. SpaceX priced its IPO at $ 135
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  Speaker 1: a share on the 11th of June. Within days, it
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  Speaker 1: rose up to around $ 225 a share, but then it
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  Speaker 1: only gave back roughly 32% of those gains in the
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  Speaker 1: weeks that followed, which means that some folks who bought
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  Speaker 1: it at the top lost a third of their investment
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  Speaker 1: pretty much instantly. And whilst it might not matter to
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  Speaker 1: the Reinharts of the world, it can be absolutely devastating
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  Speaker 1: to the everyday person who applied for and bought into
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  Speaker 1: the biggest IPO in history without necessarily understanding exactly what
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  Speaker 1: they were buying. Most didn't understand that SpaceX isn't just
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  Speaker 1: rockets and Starlink anymore, and that in February 2026, Elon
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  Speaker 1: Musk's AI company XAI actually merged into SpaceX. So when
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  Speaker 1: you buy SpaceX shares now, a huge chunk of what
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  Speaker 1: you're buying is actually exposure to AI infrastructure spending, not
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  Speaker 1: just space. Worse again, in the first quarter of 2026 alone,
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  Speaker 1: SpaceX posted a net loss of 4.28 billion US dollars,
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  Speaker 1: a huge jump from the 528 million lost the year before.
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  Speaker 1: So while people were flocking to buy it, they perhaps
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  Speaker 1: didn't realise they were making a huge bet on AI infrastructure. Truly,
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  Speaker 1: something you'd notice if you'd actually read the prospectus. While
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  Speaker 1: this is the case for SpaceX, I feel like it
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  Speaker 1: might be a sign of things to come for Anthropic
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  Speaker 1: and OpenAI, who are both watching exactly how this plays
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  Speaker 1: out before they finalise their own pricing. If you aren't
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  Speaker 1: already intimately acquainted, for example, using AI yourself, Anthropic, the
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  Speaker 1: company behind Claude, is gunning for an October listing. their
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  Speaker 1: private valuation was $ 965 billion off the back of a
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  Speaker 1: $ 65 billion funding round. They're aiming for the big T.
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  Speaker 1: They want a trillion dollar valuation. And unlike SpaceX, their
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  Speaker 1: story is genuinely about including a profit, projecting their first
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  Speaker 1: ever operating profit in the second quarter of 2026, which
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  Speaker 1: will be around $ 559 million on close to $ 11 billion
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  Speaker 1: of quarterly revenue. But something worth knowing is there's been
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  Speaker 1: some real regulatory noise around them too. On the same
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  Speaker 1: day SpaceX listed, a U.S. Commerce Department export control order
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  Speaker 1: reportedly took two of Anthropic's model offline globally. There's been
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  Speaker 1: a Pentagon supply chain review and an ongoing legal dispute
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  Speaker 1: around a Department of Defense blacklisting. which is great if
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  Speaker 1: you don't support the military-industrial complex. Go off, queen. Please
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  Speaker 1: keep in mind, whatever the market assigns to Anthropic in
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  Speaker 1: October will become the benchmark that everyone uses to judge
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  Speaker 1: OpenAI when they eventually go public. Now, most people will
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  Speaker 1: be familiar with this company because they made ChatGPT, which
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  Speaker 1: is basically a verb now, with over 900 million weekly
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  Speaker 1: active users. Their revenue has grown from about $ 2 billion
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  Speaker 1: a year in 2023 to over $ 20 billion by the
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  Speaker 1: end of 2025. But guess what? They're still not profitable.
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  Speaker 1: Reports suggest they spent $ 34 billion alone last year, including
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  Speaker 1: $ 19 billion on research and development. Personally, it all smells
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  Speaker 1: a little bit volatile to me. And sure, their CEO
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  Speaker 1: has confirmed that he won't list below a trillion dollar valuation.
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  Speaker 1: which is part of why their timeline has slipped. Reporting
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  Speaker 1: now suggests that they might wait until 2027 rather than
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  Speaker 1: rushing to list before the end of the year, partially
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  Speaker 1: because of this valuation anxiety. Okay, so with all of
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  Speaker 1: that in mind, you're probably thinking, Victoria, how do we
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  Speaker 1: actually approach this? And truly, before you even look at
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  Speaker 1: a single valuation, please go back and look at your
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  Speaker 1: own investment plan and your own investment profile. Measure any
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  Speaker 1: potential investments against your existing goals and your existing portfolio,
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  Speaker 1: not against any headlines. Ask yourself, what risks can I
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  Speaker 1: actually manage? Not what risks sound exciting in theory, but
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  Speaker 1: what risk would genuinely not keep you up at night
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  Speaker 1: if the stock dropped 30% tomorrow? Secondly, what reward or
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  Speaker 1: opportunity am I actually trying to capture here? Is it
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  Speaker 1: long-term growth? Is it dividends? Is it just wanting exposure
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  Speaker 1: to a sector that you believe in? And finally, what
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  Speaker 1: volatility can I personally handle both financially and emotionally? Do
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  Speaker 1: I have what it takes to hold on to this
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  Speaker 1: for the next decade and not sell out as soon
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  Speaker 1: as the tides change? Because as you know, investment can
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  Speaker 1: be deeply emotional if we're not careful and really considerate.
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  Speaker 1: With all of these things in mind, if you are
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  Speaker 1: interested in these IPOs, it really pays to start tuning
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  Speaker 1: into the conversation now, rather than waiting until the week
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  Speaker 1: it lists and cramming like a VCE student. Follow the reporting,
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  Speaker 1: understand the business model and read the bloody prospectus once
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  Speaker 1: it's out so you're not making a decision under pressure
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  Speaker 1: once the hype reaches fever pitch. But you know, why wait?
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  Speaker 1: Practice reading prospectus now for funsies, I guess. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: it's fun for me. SpaceX is public. Get comfortable with
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  Speaker 1: the format, the language, the risk factors. So when anthropic
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  Speaker 1: or open AI eventually goes up, you know exactly what
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  Speaker 1: you're working with and what to look out for. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: happens over the next few months, the real takeaway isn't
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  Speaker 1: about whether you should buy a particular stock, but whether
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  Speaker 1: you understand what you're buying and if it supports where
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  Speaker 1: you want to be financially. My friends, thank you for
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  Speaker 1: letting me rant. Thank you for joining me in what was,
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  Speaker 1: I guess, a very juicy IPO update. I hope that
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  Speaker 1: you feel a little bit more equipped to cut through
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  Speaker 1: the headlines next time a trillion dollar listing hits your feed.
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  Speaker 1: Please leave us a review if you found this episode
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  Speaker 1: helpful and make sure you're subscribed so that you never
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  Speaker 1: miss an episode. Take care, my friends, and we'll catch
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  Speaker 1: you next time.
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