Musk’s SpaceX courts retail investors as it aims for record-breaking stock market flotation

Elon Musk’s aerospace to AI company will host summer event to try to convince buyers it is worth $2tn

SpaceX will kick off the marketing for its highly anticipated stock exchange debut by hosting an event in June for 1,500 retail investors, as executives set out to convince buyers that the aerospace-to-artificial-intelligence group should be valued at $2tn.

In an unusual move, the company has earmarked a large portion of its shares – potentially up to 30% – for non-professional, non-institutional investors, banking on the popularity of its chief executive, Elon Musk, to help it raise $75bn (about £56bn) in what is expected to be the largest public offering in history.

SpaceX set out plans for a summer “roadshow” to its bankers on Monday night, according to Reuters. The process will begin on 7 June, as executives brief analysts from the 21 banks retained to work on the deal, followed by an event for retail investors on 11 June. The venue has not yet been disclosed.

While sales direct to retail subscribers were an established part of government privatisations during the 1980s, with many UK savers getting their first chance to own shares with the sale of British Telecom, privately held companies often ignore smaller investors at launch. Musk appears intent on rewriting the rules with the SpaceX initial public offering (IPO).

“Retail is going to be a critical part of this and ​a bigger part than any IPO in history,” SpaceX’s chief financial officer, Bret Johnsen, is reported to have said during the virtual meeting. Johnsen said the large retail component was by ⁠design as “those are folks that have been incredibly supportive of us and of Elon (Musk) for a long time, and we want to make ​sure that we recognise that”.

SpaceX will also offer its shares to investors from the UK, EU, Australia, Canada, Japan and Korea.

Analysts have compared the hype around SpaceX’s flotation, projected to be the largest in history, to the excitement that greeted Google’s launch in 2004.

In February, when it merged with Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, xAI, the conglomerate was valued at $1.25tn; over the past month, that number has moved to $1.75tn and is now – according to Bloomberg – $2tn.

George Ferguson, a senior industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said that it was difficult to accurately value SpaceX, as the only figures available to the public were its revenue, as opposed to more detailed information on its profits.

“A large portion of the valuation of will come down to xAI, which is harder to value. It’s a laggard in the AI race right now,” he said. He forecasts revenues of $20bn for SpaceX this year, with the AI division contributing just $1bn.

The details of its offering have been closely held, although more are expected to emerge in late May, when it makes its prospectus public. The company has retained the largest banks on Wall Street to lead the fundraising, working with Morgan Stanley, Bank ​of America, Citigroup, ⁠JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

SpaceX generated roughly $15 to $16bn in revenue last year, with the biggest contributions coming from its satellite internet service Starlink, as well as extensive contracts with the US government for defence and space travel.

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While Elon Musk’s original space ambitions included plans for building a civilisation on Mars, these have pivoted in the past month to a different goal: datacentres in space, which proponents argue could solve energy challenges through a constant supply of solar power.

So far, however, this remains an unproven idea and is fraught with technological hurdles: solar radiation, space debris, and the more basic issue of getting the components of a datacentre into space and assembling it there. This would probably require advanced robotic systems that do not exist yet.

SpaceX aims to surmount this with a new rocket, Starship, which it bills as the world’s “most powerful launch vehicle”. Yesterday, it delayed a test launch of that rocket until mid-May.

“The question will be: how soon can datacenters in space be realised?” said Ferguson.

“What would expectations for revenue and profit be on that business? And how would you incorporate into the valuation for the company now? The further out, and we think it is a distance away, the more datacenters in space become a drag on valuation rather than additive.”