SpaceX went public: why the IPO is just a warm-up before the main deal
SpaceX's stock offering became the largest IPO in history, but in my deep conviction, this is just the starting gun for the formation of a new space ecosystem. Analysts who have closely followed the process agree that the real opportunity for investors is only just beginning.
The company placed 555 million shares at $135, raising $75 billion. Trading opened at $150, reached an intraday high of $176.52, and closed the first session at $161.11 — a gain of 19.3%. Market capitalization exceeded $2 trillion, instantly making SpaceX the sixth-largest public company in the U.S. Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire.
How the forecast worked
Back on April 3, I publicly stated my position by launching my own space index and pointing to a stock market equivalent — the UFO ETF fund, whose quotes mirrored the movement of SpaceX shares with a coefficient of determination R² of about 87-88%. This meant that the dynamics of one asset almost completely explained the dynamics of the other.
The price aligned almost exactly with the scale of targets I had predicted. The reports tracked five levels: SpaceX's internal fair valuation at $1.25 trillion, secondary trades on the Forge platform with a valuation of about $1.53 trillion, the IPO target of $1.75 trillion, and synthetic perpetual contracts SPCX on Hyperliquid and Binance, which priced in $2.2-2.4 trillion. The close at $161.11 with a market cap just above $2 trillion landed exactly between the IPO target and the synthetic premium. Sellers on Forge at the equivalent of $129 gave up about 25% of potential profit, while buyers of the perpetual contract on Hyperliquid at $200 ended up at a loss.
Where to look for opportunity now
The IPO was not the finale of this deal. It is a signal for the start of three new ones. First — a compression of quotes due to SpaceX's inclusion in stock indices, which will begin in the next fifteen trading days. Second — a capital shift from securities that investors used as substitutes for SpaceX before its stock market debut into the real supply chain of the space industry. Third — an emerging contrarian reversal in the shares of major defense contractors that the market has undervalued.
Of particular interest, in my view, is the hidden part of the supply chain — companies from Taiwan, South Korea, and the UK, largely ignored by Wall Street's space-themed portfolios. It is these names that could win in the coming years as the space economy grows.
From the SpaceX story, I draw a lesson applicable beyond it: in pre-IPO markets, the truth lies between the price of the last private round and the most leveraged synthetic instrument. Institutional and retail investors who received shares at the offering price of $135 locked in a 19% profit in one day.
My professional opinion: the space economy is entering a new phase, and those who are now focused only on SpaceX shares risk missing the larger growth story of the entire infrastructure chain. The market is only beginning to realize that the IPO was not the finish line, but the starting point.