Introduction: SpaceX aims for largest IPO ever with $1.8tn valuation

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"Rockets are hard," as Elon Musk noted last week after rival Jeff Bezos's New Glenn rocket exploded during a test in Florida. Yet launching the world's largest stock market flotation is also a challenge.

Musk's SpaceX has announced plans to IPO at a valuation of $1.78tn, which would mark the largest stock market float ever.

Plans filed last night show that SpaceX aims to raise $75bn, although that could rise to $86bn if the banks underwriting the deal take up an option to sell additional shares.

If successful, this will rank as the largest IPO in history, overtaking Saudi Aramco's float in 2019, and put Musk on track to become a trillionaire.

While SpaceX's rocket operations and its ambitions for orbital artificial intelligence data centres are ambitious, so is its IPO valuation.

The company posted a net loss of $4.94bn in 2025, Reuters points out, with revenue rising 33% to $18.67bn.

That means it is targeting an astronomic valuation of over 90 times its annual revenues (investors would rather value companies as a multiple of its profits...).

Floating on the stock market will give SpaceX access to a fresh source of capital. But it will also allow insiders to cash out some of their profits on SpaceX, by selling their shares to ordinary investors. Index fund trackers and pension funds will provide some of this 'exit liquidity', meaning we could soon all find we have a stake in Musk's ambitions.

Some analysts have questioned SpaceX's mega valuation.

Financial data firm Morningstar warned earlier this week that the company is "significantly overvalued."

Assessing the future value of the space economy is tricky; Morningstar's discounted cash flow valuation of SpaceX (based on its future cash flows) is $780bn, and they say:

We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO.

The agenda

8.30am BST: Eurozone construction PMI for May
9am BST: UK new car sales data for May
9.30am BST: UK construction PMI for May
10.30am BST: US 'Challenger' jobs cuts data for May
1.30pm BST: US weekly 'initial claims' jobless data

Key events

1h ago FTSE 100 ticks up as oil drops
2h ago Jamie Dimon to pitch JPMorgan's ultra-rich clients on SpaceX IPO
2h ago iForex: some investors might baulk at SpaceX's huge valuation
2h ago Introduction: SpaceX aims for largest IPO ever with $1.8tn valuation

Another of Elon Musk's businesses, Tesla, grew its car sales in the UK by 45% last month.

A total of 2,934 new Teslas were sold in May, up from 2,016 in May 2025, new data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show.

Overall, the UK new car market grew by 7.1% in May, with battery electric vehicles now making up 27.3% of sales.

China's carmakers grew their sales strongly - BYD were up 70% year-on-year to 5,157 cars, while Chery sold 3,166 vehicles, infinitely more than in May 2025 (when it did not sell any cars in the UK).

Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, says:

Britain's car buyers are responding to a market offering more choice than ever, from both new and familiar brands, resulting in a robust May. The EV transition is progressing, but consumer uptake still lags behind even today's targets, let alone the ambition set out in the latest Carbon Budget.
While industry shares the long-term ambition, the pathway to Net Zero must be credible. It cannot come at the cost of lost competitiveness and deindustrialisation. A review of the transition is now urgent to ensure ambition matches market realities and we have a sustainable path to road transport decarbonisation.

Alan Miller, CIO at wealth manager SCM Direct, is concerned that passive investment funds will be forced buyers of SpaceX's shares due to the changes to index inclusion rules (see previous post).

Miller says these changes threaten investor safety, explaining:

"Passive investing has been sold as the safe, low-cost default. But the rules are being rewritten so that the biggest, most hyped companies in history can be forced into your index fund on day one, at almost any price.
That is not investing, it is being a captive buyer. We size our holdings by what a business actually earns, not by how excited the crowd is, which is precisely why our clients will not be dragged in."

Somewhat controversially, recent tweaks to stock market listing rules will make it easier for SpaceX to get its IPO off the ground.

The Nasdaq index, for example, changed its index inclusion rules, which means SpaceX's shares would be listed faster - which would force index trackers to buy the stock sooner than previously.

Forbes has the details:

Under the old rules, a new stock had to season for at least 3 months before it could join the index, and it had to have at least 10% of its shares traded publicly. Both of those requirements are now gone.
Now, a stock is eligible for fast-track inclusion after just 15 trading days, with almost no float if its market capitalization places it among the top 40 holdings of the Nasdaq-100.

FTSE 100 ticks up as oil drops

London's stock market is a little higher at the start of trading.

The FTSE 100 share index is up by 13 points, or 0.13%, to 13,346 points. Housebuilders and banks are among the risers, as a fall in the oil price eases inflation worries.

Brent crude is down 1%, below $97 a barrel, after the US announced that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to implement a ceasefire to end hostilities.

SpaceX's monster IPO is just part of a wave of very large stock market listings planned for this summer, with AI rivals ChatGPT and Anthropic also aiming to float.

That could create ructions in the markets, as investors try to raise funds so they can buy shares in these three companies...

Jamie Dimon to pitch JPMorgan's ultra-rich clients on SpaceX IPO

JP Morgan's CEO is to pitch SpaceX to his bank's ultra-rich clients.

Jamie Dimon plans to discuss the upcoming SpaceX initial public offering with thousands of the bank's high net worth clients this week, according to Bloomberg, who report:

Dimon will host a 'live interactive discussion' Thursday from JPMorgan's headquarters, according to invitations seen by Bloomberg.
He will be joined by Mary Callahan Erdoes, the CEO of the bank's asset and wealth management division, and a pair of SpaceX executives: president Gwynne Shotwell and CFO Bret Johnsen.

iForex: some investors might baulk at SpaceX's huge valuation

SpaceX's $1.75tn is 'stratospherically high', warns Michael Hewson, senior market analyst at iForex, which might put some investors off taking part in the IPO:

In what looks set to be one of the most hotly anticipated IPOs in years, SpaceX is set to blast off on 12th June as it looks to raise up to $75bn from investors at $135 a share, which would value the company at an eye-popping $1.75tn.
This eye-watering valuation looks set to see the business included in the Nasdaq with many questioning how anyone can justify such a stratospheric valuation at this level of fixed price, even before the book-building process has started.
In doing this SpaceX runs the risk that some investors might baulk at the price tag, raising the risk it could come up short, as the investor road show gets underway.
On any normal metric the numbers defy belief given that last year SpaceX lost $4.9bn on the back of total revenues of $18.7bn.
While the increase in revenues of 33% from 2024 was welcome, most of the improvement came from its Starlink service, which contributed about $11.4bn.
On the basis of last year's revenues of $18.7bn, a $1.7tn valuation would equate to 92 times sales, which for a business that can currently be described as either an aerospace or telecoms business is stratospherically high.