SpaceX’s shares fell to just above $135 on Wednesday, the price that CEO Elon Musk and his company chose ahead of its blockbuster June 12 IPO that raked in nearly $86 billion.
The company’s stock spent much of the day below that IPO price, at one point dipping beneath $133 per share, before it traded back up to finish at $135.27.
The dip on Wednesday followed a steady decline in the month since the company went public. SpaceX initially saw its stock price rise to more than $200 in the days after it went public, briefly giving it a valuation that rivaled tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft. Its shares have lost value basically every week since reaching that high point.
Some of the volatility is attributable to the fact that just 4% of the company’s total shares are trading on the Nasdaq. That small “float,” as it’s known, combined with an immense amount of constant attention on the company, has created wild swings during the first month of trading.
The markets also appear to be sobering up on CEO Elon Musk’s grand vision for the company, part of a broader deflation in tech stocks over the last month. Not only has SpaceX’s stock traded down, but also bonds the company sold in the wake of the IPO are suffering.
A prolonged downturn for SpaceX could have wider effects because the company’s stock price is a sign of how investors view the (literal) otherworldly promises Musk has made about what his company can accomplish. SpaceX’s IPO has also set the table for other Big Tech companies like Anthropic and OpenAI to go public. Both of those companies have filed confidentially for an IPO. While neither has set a date to go public, SpaceX’s stock is being closely watched to gauge how successful those IPOs could be.
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