SpaceX IPO Cools to 33% Gain as Indexes Loom
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- SpaceX (SPCX) peaked at 67% above its $135 IPO price intraday on Tuesday before cooling to a 33% premium, with momentum fading over the trading week.
- SpaceX will be added to the Russell 1000 Index on June 26 as part of FTSE Russell's June reconstitution, with full evaluation slated for December, per FTSE Russell.
- Index providers CRSP, Nasdaq, and MSCI have rules allowing newly public companies like SpaceX to join their benchmarks after 5, 10, and 15 trading days respectively, putting roughly $8.9 trillion in passive fund assets in position to buy the stock.
- Zephirin initiated coverage on SpaceX with a buy rating and $310 price target, citing an "underappreciated supply-demand imbalance," while Oppenheimer raised its target to $250 from $190, pointing to the planned $60 billion acquisition of AI coding firm Cursor.
- SpaceX is preparing a bond sale of at least $20 billion — its first investment-grade dollar-bond issuance — with proceeds aimed at refinancing a bridge loan maturing September 2027; the company received a BBB from S&P, BBB+ from Fitch, and BAA1 from Moody's.
- SpaceX raised $85.7 billion in IPO proceeds and carries $29.1 billion in debt, with the first tranche of insider lockup shares set to release just days after June-quarter earnings, which FactSet projects for early August.
- Direxion launched an ETF leveraged to SpaceX (LOFF) in the early days of trading, and the article notes the first week of SpaceX options trading saw "immense" volume.
Why it matters: The cooling 33% post-IPO gain masks a powerful technical setup: index inclusion rules at CRSP, Nasdaq, and MSCI could funnel buying from ~$8.9 trillion in passive assets into a stock with limited float and staged insider lockups, while the new BBB credit rating unlocks a debt-funded growth template Musk used at Tesla, where SpaceX already carries $29.1 billion in existing debt against $85.7 billion in fresh equity.
