Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

[Stock market trading growth graph]

Michael Burry highlighted on his Substack on Friday that the stock market continues to punish the stocks of large, well-established businesses with significant owners earnings, little debt, and large buybacks, which are accretive to intrinsic value per share at current levels.

He noted the companies are suffering due to AI capital flows as well as to extrapolated maximum-AI scenarios that are seen as unlikely.

Burry added to his position in Adobe (ADBE [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/ADBE]) as he pointed to deep value, with the company's gross margin rate near the all-time highs. He also snapped up more shares of Alibaba (BABA [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/BABA]), PayPal (PYPL [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/PYPL]), and Veeva Systems (VEEV [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/VEEV]).

On Alibaba (BABA [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/BABA]): "It is the most advanced company in China as far as AI strategy goes, and it has been buying back stock. The value continues to accrete to common shareholders even if the market does not reward such accretion of late. The stock is well off recent highs. When the time comes, the stock will launch fast and fly high. I continue to hold other Hong Kong stocks as well."

On PayPal (PYPL [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/PYPL]): "Same chart metrics/color scheme as above. Management turnover is hurting the stock as well. Has to look attractive to both PE firms and strategic acquirers at this level, 7-8x earnings, and buying back stock hand over fist. The market has been attending PayPal’s wake for years now, though the body has yet to show."

On Veeva Systems (VEEV [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/VEEV]): "It has come back to lows, with its price/earnings and price/sales far below historical levels. The Salesforce threat is only relevant to a small part of its business. The significance has been far overstated."

MORE ON BURRY'S FAVORITES

* Adobe: The Post-Earnings Selloff Is A Massive Opportunity [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4914612-adobe-the-post-earnings-selloff-is-a-massive-opportunity]
* Adobe Inc. 2026 Q2 - Results - Earnings Call Presentation [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4914624-adobe-inc-2026-q2-results-earnings-call-presentation]
* Adobe: Do Not Touch This AI Show-Me Story [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4914600-adobe-do-not-touch-this-ai-show-me-story]
* Adobe's leadership transitions and freemium push create uncertainty: analysts [https://seekingalpha.com/news/4602933-adobes-leadership-transitions-and-freemium-push-create-uncertainty-analysts]
* Alibaba bids $1.5B for China grocer Pupu in fight with Meituan: report [https://seekingalpha.com/news/4602824-alibaba-bids-15b-for-china-grocer-pupu-in-fight-with-meituan-report]

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

Alibaba Group BABA is offering $1.5 billion to acquire Chinese grocery delivery firm Pupu, initiating a bidding war as part of a broader campaign to wrest market share from online commerce rival Meituan. The proposed price is more than double an earlier $600 million bid from Sun Art Retail, a former Alibaba affiliate now backed by private equity firm DCP Capital.

Founded in Fujian province, Pupu operates as one of China's leading instant grocery delivery platforms, generating annual revenues exceeding RMB 30 billion and running a rapid 30-minute delivery network across key cities in Fujian, Guangdong, Sichuan and Hubei provinces. The proposed acquisition reflects Alibaba's accelerating pivot toward supply-chain depth over pure platform economics — a direct response to intensifying rivalry with Meituan and JD.com in local commerce.

This strategic push aligns with what Alibaba's fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results already reveal about the company's spending direction. Quick commerce revenues in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 surged 57% year over year to RMB 19,988 million, driven by order growth following the rollout of Taobao Instant Commerce in late April 2025. For full-year fiscal 2026, quick commerce revenues reached RMB 78,520 million, up 47% year over year. However, adjusted EBITA fell 84% year over year to RMB 5,102 million, and non-GAAP net income declined nearly 100%, with free cash flow swinging to an outflow of RMB 17,300 million, attributed primarily to investments in quick commerce and cloud infrastructure.

The timing is complicated by a fresh regulatory overhang. Alibaba shares fell as much as 6.5% in Hong Kong — their biggest single-session decline in nearly three months — after the Beijing branch of SAMR summoned the company along with JD.com JD, PDD Holdings PDD, ByteDance and Xiaohongshu over alleged false advertising during the 618-midyear shopping festival. The summons highlighted Beijing's broader campaign against ruinous price wars and misleading promotional tactics, pushing platforms to pivot from aggressive discounting toward innovation and quality services.

For Alibaba, the Pupu bid signals confidence in its instant retail strategy even as near-term profitability faces pressure. Whether regulators ultimately clear the deal — and whether Alibaba can integrate Pupu's regional supply chain at scale — will shape how effectively this capital-intensive gamble pays off against a tightening competitive and regulatory landscape.

How JD.com and PDD Holdings Stack Up

Alibaba's quick commerce push mirrors the strategic calculus of its two U.S.-listed rivals. JD.com has been scaling its food delivery arm steadily, with JD Food Delivery improving unit economics and narrowing sequential losses every quarter since launch, while JD Retail posted a record operating margin of 5.6% in the first quarter of 2026. JD.com, however, remains focused on organic build-out rather than large acquisitions. PDD Holdings, meanwhile, has signaled that supply chain investment is the company’s core strategic priority heading into its next decade, committing significant long-term resources even at the expense of near-term profitability. Both JD.com and PDD Holdings were among the platforms summoned by SAMR over 618 promotional practices, placing all three companies under similar regulatory clouds as each navigates its own path in China's fiercely contested local commerce arena.

Story Continues

BABA’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

BABA shares have lost 23.1% in the year-to-date period, underperforming the Zacks Internet – Commerce industry and the Zacks Retail-Wholesale sector, respectively.

BABA’s YTD Price PerformanceZacks Investment Research

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, BABA stock is currently trading at a trailing 12-month Price/Earnings ratio of 35.66X compared with the industry’s 29.42X. BABA has a Value Score of D.

BABA’s ValuationZacks Investment Research

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2027 earnings is pegged at $7.38 per share, down 4.3% over the past 60 days, indicating a 89.72% year-over-year increase.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited Price and ConsensusAlibaba Group Holding Limited Price and Consensus

Alibaba Group Holding Limited price-consensus-chart | Alibaba Group Holding Limited Quote

Alibaba currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report

JD.com, Inc. (JD) : Free Stock Analysis Report

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA) : Free Stock Analysis Report

PDD Holdings Inc. Sponsored ADR (PDD) : Free Stock Analysis Report

This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

Zacks Investment Research

View Comments

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

Investing.com -- SpaceX begins trading on Nasdaq today under the ticker SPCX, targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion and seeking to raise $75 billion, more than 2.5 times the previous record set by Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL:2222) in 2019. The scale alone rewrites the record books. But the more interesting argument for "unique" runs deeper than the headline number.

SpaceX spent over two decades as a private company, accumulating more than $10 billion in venture capital funding while remaining almost entirely inaccessible to ordinary investors. That changes today for the first time. A wave of institutional holders, including Founders Fund, DFJ, D1 Capital, Fidelity, and Thrive Capital, along with thousands of early employees, are reaching their first genuine exit opportunity after years of holding illiquid paper.

The offering structure breaks convention further. SpaceX has allocated up to 30% of the IPO to retail investors through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, roughly triple the 5 to 10% standard for major public offerings. Demand has reportedly reached $150 billion against $75 billion in available shares.

Nasdaq changed its rules specifically to allow SpaceX to join the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days, down from the previous three-month minimum. BNP Paribas estimates Nasdaq 100 inclusion alone will generate approximately $8 billion in forced passive buying within the first month of listing, with total passive fund purchases potentially reaching $30 billion.

The February 2026 merger with xAI means investors are purchasing exposure to launch infrastructure, satellite broadband, and AI compute in a single instrument, a combination with no real precedent in public market history.

Analysts estimate the offering will create approximately 4,000 new millionaires, from senior executives to engineers and support staff who received equity over years of employment.

Below, I discuss the most important points for those looking to buy into the IPO.

Three Businesses, One Ticker: SpaceX’s Revenue Structure

The $18.7 billion in 2025 revenue that headlines the S-1 filing carries an important caveat: it is the product of common-control accounting, a GAAP convention that allows companies with a shared controlling shareholder to retroactively consolidate their financials.

Because Elon Musk controlled SpaceX, xAI, and X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) simultaneously, the S-1 presents all three as a single entity for all periods shown, including 2023 and 2024, even though the formal merger was only completed in February 2026. The revenue growth story investors are reading covers three distinct businesses that were independently run until six months ago.

Story Continues

Revenue

At the segment level, the company is three businesses with radically different financial profiles operating under the same stock price.

Starlink, the satellite broadband service, is the financial engine. It generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025, representing 61% of the total, and produced $4.4 billion in operating income at a margin of approximately 39%. Subscriber growth has been extraordinary: from 2.3 million users at the end of 2023 to 8.9 million by the end of 2025 and 10.3 million by the first quarter of 2026.

That growth has come at a cost to average revenue per user, which declined from $99 per month in 2023 to $66 by Q1 2026, reflecting SpaceX’s deliberate strategy of trading unit economics for global penetration. In May 2026, SpaceX raised Starlink plan prices for the first time, signaling a potential shift toward monetizing its installed base.Starlink

The Space segment, which encompasses rocket launches for commercial and government customers, generated $4.1 billion in 2025 revenue but ran a $657 million operating loss, almost entirely driven by the $3 billion invested in Starship research and development.

Operationally, the launch business is dominant globally: SpaceX completed approximately 165 Falcon 9 launches in 2025 and holds roughly 90% of the global commercial launch share by mass-to-orbit. Of those launches, fewer than half were for external customers. The majority served Starlink internally.

The AI segment, incorporating xAI’s computing infrastructure, the Grok large language model, and X’s advertising and subscription revenue, generated $3.2 billion in 2025 revenue against a $6.4 billion operating loss.

Of SpaceX’s $20.7 billion in total capex in 2025, $12.7 billion went to AI infrastructure, including the COLOSSUS data center in Memphis, currently the largest coherent AI training cluster on earth. In Q1 2026 alone, the AI segment produced an operating loss of $2.47 billion.Revenue Segment

The summary picture: Starlink is profitable and growing rapidly. The Space segment is deliberately loss-making, investing in Starship, the infrastructure that could reduce launch costs by an order of magnitude. The AI segment is consuming Starlink’s profits in full and then some. Without the xAI merger, SpaceX posted a $791 million net profit in 2024. With it, the company posted a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025 and a $4.28 billion loss in Q1 2026 alone.

The IPO prospectus also discloses $29.1 billion in total long-term debt as of March 2026, of which $20 billion is a short-term bridge loan that must be repaid within six months of a successful listing.

A fourth dimension not reflected in the current financial structure is the possibility of an eventual merger between SpaceX and Tesla. Wolfe Research notes that prediction markets are pricing in a 56% probability that a combination will complete before mid-2027. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives places the probability at 80% or higher.

The strategic logic centers on consolidated voting control for Musk, the AI synergies between Tesla’s autonomous-driving data and SpaceX’s compute infrastructure, and the combined capital base that a single entity would command. China is the primary regulatory obstacle, given that US defense and space companies face broad restrictions on operating there, and Tesla derives approximately 19% of its revenues from the country.

The thesis does not affect today’s IPO valuation directly, but it explains why a meaningful proportion of Tesla shareholders hold the stock as a proxy for SpaceX exposure, and why the two companies are already more intertwined than their separate structures suggest: Tesla converted its $2 billion xAI investment into SpaceX shares following the February 2026 merger.

Will it be included in the S&P 500?

S&P Global declined to change its index inclusion rules, which means the world’s most tracked benchmark will not hold one of the ten most valuable publicly listed companies for at least a year. S&P 500 inclusion requires a 12-month seasoning period after listing, four quarters of cumulative GAAP profitability, and a minimum 10% public float. SpaceX currently fails two of those three tests.

The decision protects the index’s reputation for standards-based methodology. With roughly $20 trillion invested in or benchmarked to the S&P 500, any deviation from established rules risks weakening the consistency that passive investors rely on. As Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth noted, making exceptions for large but still unprofitable companies does not make much sense.

The representativeness argument cuts back, however. A top-ten company by market capitalization that sits outside the most-followed equity index creates a measurable benchmark gap. Investors in S&P 500 tracking funds will not own a company that, by market cap, belongs in the conversation with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). That structural underweight has no remedy for at least twelve months, and it arrives precisely as an estimated $14 billion in passive buying from S&P 500 funds sits on the sidelines waiting for profitability to be demonstrated.

The decision also hands active managers a clear alpha opportunity. Any fund benchmarked against the S&P 500 can buy SpaceX now and position ahead of the eventual forced passive buying that S&P 500 inclusion will trigger.

The broader question this raises is whether the index’s methodology is built for an era when trillion-dollar companies can spend two decades in private markets before listing. SpaceX is the first real test. OpenAI and Anthropic, both targeting IPOs in 2026, face the same threshold. If all three remain outside the S&P 500 for a year and perform well in the interim, the pressure on the index committee to revisit its rules will be considerable.

Only 4.3% of the Company Will Trade on Day One

The $75 billion raise and the 30% retail allocation are two different numbers describing two different things. SpaceX is selling 555.6 million shares at $135 each, implying a total valuation of $1.77 trillion. That $75 billion represents approximately 4.3% of the total company. The remaining 95.7% remains locked up in the hands of existing shareholders, none of whom are selling any shares as part of this offering.

The 30% retail figure describes how that 4.3% slice is divided: 30% of the IPO proceeds, worth roughly $22.5 billion, is reserved for retail investors. Retail investors are therefore receiving about 1.3% of the total company.

The result is that the IPO prices 100% of a $1.75 trillion business based on the trading of 4.3% of its shares, into a partially forced-buy environment created by index inclusion mechanics, with most sellers locked out. Price discovery under those conditions reflects supply-and-demand mechanics more than any consensus view of fundamental value.

The lock-up structure governing the other 95.7% is deliberately staggered. After SpaceX reports its first quarterly results covering the April to June period, insiders become eligible to sell up to 20% of their locked-up shares, with an additional 10% unlocking if the stock is trading at least 30% above the offering price. Five time-based tranches at 70, 90, 105, 120, and 135 days each release a further 7% of eligible shares.

A further 28% unlocks after the Q3 earnings report, with the full remainder coming off restriction at 180 days. Elon Musk, who controls approximately 42% of equity and 85% of voting power, is subject to a separate 366-day restriction. One notable exception: a 5% friends-and-family carve-out carries no lockup, meaning roughly $3.75 billion of shares could reach the market on day one.

Is a 4.3% Float Normal?

It is well below any standard applied to mature public companies or even to recent IPOs. Most established index stocks trade with free floats above 80%. The S&P 500 requires a minimum 10% public float for membership eligibility. Nasdaq’s own rules required at least 10% until the exchange removed the threshold entirely in May 2026, a change introduced specifically to accommodate SpaceX.Free Float

Among comparable mega-cap listings, the closest historical parallel is Saudi Aramco, which floated 1.5% of the company in 2019 and, six years later, still sits at just 2.4% float. That offering was widely described at the time as not reflecting genuine market pricing, in part because of how little real price discovery was possible at that float level. SpaceX’s 4.3% is meaningfully higher than Aramco’s initial float, but sits in the same structural category.

Among the major tech IPOs more commonly used as benchmarks, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) listed at approximately 15% and eventually expanded to 86%. Google and Facebook each floated roughly 18 to 19% at their respective debuts. By the end of a standard lock-up period, it is typical for a company’s free float to reach 50-60% of total equity. SpaceX starts at 4.3% and will expand incrementally over six months before approaching anything like normal trading liquidity. The academic research on low-float IPOs offers a pointed historical note: since 1980, all but one large U.S. IPO that initially floated less than 5% of its stock underperformed the market over the subsequent three years.

A counterpoint comes from Oppenheimer’s analysis of three comparable small-float listings. Google floated 7.2% in August 2004, gained 18% on Day 1, and never retraced its first-day close, returning 92% through year-end and a further 100% in its second year as a public company.

LinkedIn issued approximately 8% of shares in May 2011, surged 109% on Day 1, pulled back 33% through year-end, then recovered 79% in Year 2. Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) listed at roughly 9.5% float in September 2023, rose 25% on Day 1, and returned 64% in its second year.

Near-term volatility following a constrained-float debut does not preclude strong long-term performance for companies with genuine operational moats. SpaceX, at 4.3%, sits below all three precedents, and the quality of its underlying business will ultimately determine the trajectory it follows.Small-Float IPO Comparables

Priced at Over 40x Sales: What History Says

The foundational research on IPO long-run performance comes from Jay Ritter at the University of Florida, whose data covering thousands of IPOs since the 1970s has been continuously updated. The headline finding is that buying at the first-day close, the realistic entry point for retail investors, puts buyers at a structural disadvantage regardless of the company. Investors who buy at the offer price see a three-year market-adjusted return of approximately negative 3.3%. Investors who buy at the first-day close, after the typical day-one pop, start from negative 20.5%.

SpaceX sits at the intersection of several risk factors that Ritter’s data identifies as compounding predictors of long-term underperformance.

The valuation multiple is the most severe. IPOs with price-to-sales ratios above 40 times have trailed the market by 58 percentage points over three years in Ritter’s dataset, despite averaging a 93.6% first-day gain.

SpaceX’s price-to-sales ratio at the IPO valuation is approximately 94 times, more than double the threshold that already carries that record. Of the 14 IPOs in Ritter’s data with revenues above $100 million and price-to-sales ratios above 40, 12 subsequently underperformed the market over their first three years if purchased at the first-day close.

Argus Research’s peer analysis of the five largest US-listed technology companies finds them trading at an average price-to-sales ratio of 12.2 times. SpaceX’s implied 92.1x represents a 7.5-fold premium to that group average, in a market where no comparable public company has ever sustained a multiple of this magnitude at this revenue scale.Price to Sales

Profitability compounds the picture. Unprofitable IPOs pop an average of 26.5% on day one but return negative 0.5% over three years, lagging the market by 30.7 percentage points. The market environment adds a further layer: Ritter’s research specifically found that companies going public in high-volume years fare worst. The 2026 IPO wave, with SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic together targeting more than $240 billion in combined raises, represents exactly the kind of concentrated, high-volume cycle that has historically produced the weakest cohort-level returns. A large first-day pop, which the mechanical setup of this offering almost guarantees, is itself a negative signal. The bigger the day-one gain, the more the underlying long-term underperformance tends to follow.Risk Scorecard

Sources: Jay R. Ritter, "Initial Public Offerings: Updated Long-run Statistics," University of Florida, March 2026 (4,110 IPOs, 1980-2024); Carson Group, June 2026; Summitward IPO data analysis, June 2026.

The counterargument deserves stating clearly. Ritter’s data covers averages across thousands of companies. SpaceX generates $18.7 billion in real revenue, has demonstrated 33% year-on-year growth, and holds near-monopoly positions in commercial launch and satellite broadband. The top 10% of IPOs in Ritter’s dataset earn average market-adjusted returns of over 300%. SpaceX could be in that cohort. But the base rate, across five risk factors this offering triggers simultaneously, argues against the retail buyer entering at the first-day close.

Are There Guardrails Preventing Institutional Share-Dumping on Retail?

At the IPO itself, the protection is real and total. The S-1 filing explicitly states that the share sale is limited to SpaceX as an entity, meaning that no existing holder, venture fund, early employee, or institutional investor is selling a single share as part of the offering. Every dollar of the $75 billion goes to the company. On day one, the guardrail holds.

The staggered lock-up structure then spreads the institutional exit across approximately six months rather than concentrating it in a single 180-day expiry event. This reduces the risk of a violent supply shock at any one moment and is meaningfully better for retail investors than the traditional cliff-style lockup.

Two caveats qualify that picture. The 5% friends-and-family carve-out carries no lockup, placing approximately $3.75 billion of shares in the hands of people who can sell starting on day one. More structurally, the staggered structure begins releasing shares far sooner than a conventional lockup would allow. The first window, 20% of eligible insider shares, opens after the Q2 earnings release in late July, six to eight weeks from today. A conventional 180-day lockup would have held that supply until December.

The staggered structure was not primarily designed to protect retail investors. It was engineered to expand the public float rapidly enough to maximize SpaceX’s weighting in the Nasdaq 100 after fast-track inclusion, which in turn increases the forced passive buying from index funds. Historical precedents are cautionary: Facebook’s 2012 IPO used a staggered lockup and shares had still fallen more than 40% from the offering price by the time it concluded. Palantir saw retail enthusiasm drive the stock from $10 to near $40 before insiders, including Peter Thiel, sold tens of millions of shares into that premium at lockup expiry. The stock fell 13% in a single session.

What About the Funds That Hold Positions?

The funds on SpaceX’s cap table represent a different category of seller from individual insiders and operate under structural pressures that the lock-up governs in timing but cannot dissolve. The major institutional holders include Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ Growth, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Thrive Capital, Alphabet, Baillie Gifford, D1 Capital Partners, and Fidelity, among others. Founders Fund and Valor Equity Partners are each sitting on positions worth more than $60 billion in paper gains. Sequoia invested approximately $2 billion in total and holds roughly 1.5% of the combined entity, implying returns exceeding $20 billion.

Traditional venture capital funds are legally obligated to return capital to their limited partners. That obligation does not expire with the lockup. DFJ and Founders Fund invested in SpaceX before its valuation reached $1 billion, more than 15 years ago. Many of the fund vehicles holding those original positions are approaching or past their designed lifespan. Once the lockup releases, distribution is a legal requirement.

Different fund structures will behave differently: evergreen crossover funds like ARK Invest are designed to hold companies through their full lifecycle and can trim positions gradually without a mandate to distribute, while mark-to-market hedge funds like D1 Capital and Coatue will act tactically.

The SPV layer introduces a complication that has received almost no mainstream coverage. A substantial portion of SpaceX shares are held through layered special-purpose vehicles, sometimes two or three tiers deep.

When the lockup releases for a first-layer SPV, that vehicle has 30 days to distribute shares to its own investors, who then have 30 days to distribute further down the chain. The result is a cascading distribution process extending well beyond the nominal lockup dates in the S-1, with investors at lower tiers potentially waiting months longer than the public calendar suggests. Some investors in these vehicles have reportedly not yet confirmed how many shares they will actually receive.

Who Is Selling at the IPO, and Who Is Not?

The cleanest summary of today’s actual mechanics: the institutional ecosystem is entirely locked out at the IPO. All selling pressure on day one comes from two sources: the new shares being issued by SpaceX itself and the $3.75 billion friends-and-family tranche that carries no restriction.

Retail investors receiving IPO allocations also face their own informal holding incentive. Fidelity enforces a 15-calendar-day tracking period, after which selling is penalty-free. Robinhood applies a 30-day window with a 60-day ban from future IPO access for first violations. SoFi may charge a $50 fee for any retail seller within the first 120 days. The brokers are managing short-term supply from the retail tranche, creating an informal lockup running in parallel with the institutional structure.

One detail worth noting for context: the "smart money" in this story was not entirely waiting for today. The pre-IPO secondary market for SpaceX shares has been one of the most actively traded in private market history for several years. Sophisticated holders who wanted partial liquidity before the IPO could access it through secondary transactions at prices climbing steadily since 2022. Some of the selling pressure that might otherwise concentrate after lockup expiry has already been absorbed, quietly, long before retail investors were ever involved.

The picture that emerges across the full structure is a liquidity event more carefully choreographed than any previous IPO of this scale: no institutional dumping at listing, a first day controlled by mechanical index-buying and retail demand, and a rolling six-month window of institutional distribution to follow. Whether that choreography is sufficient to hold the price at levels where retail buyers who enter today will still feel comfortable in 2029 is, as five decades of IPO research suggest, a genuinely open question.

Bottom Line

SpaceX’s IPO is a landmark event by every structural measure — the largest offering in market history, the first genuine public access to a company that defined a generation of private-market investing, and a liquidity mechanism assembled with more engineering than any comparable deal. The day-one protections for retail are real: no insider dumping, a staggered lockup, and a Musk stake that stays locked for a year. But the protections govern the opening act, not the full run.

Once the lockup windows open from late July onward, a wave of institutional distribution begins that has only one direction. Combined with a price-to-sales multiple that has no precedent among profitable mega-cap companies, an unprofitable income statement, a 4.3% float that compresses price discovery, and an IPO cycle that academic research has consistently identified as a risk period for retail buyers, the long-run risk profile for anyone entering at or above the first-day close is substantial.

SpaceX may well be the rare exception that rewrites the historical record. The honest read of the evidence, however, is that the smart money got in years ago, the index-inclusion mechanics will drive the first weeks of trading, and the retail investor who buys the excitement on Day 1 is the last link in a very long liquidity chain.

Related articles

SpaceX guide: Everything you need to know about the biggest IPO in history

JPMorgan outlines ten strategic themes that could shape the outlook for 2026

Nvidia's new Alpamayo project: What it means for Tesla?

View Comments

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

SpaceX is shooting for the stars: a record-breaking $135 per share initial public offering that would value the company at $1.77 trillion.

This is about seven-and-a-half times Alibaba’s inflation-adjusted valuation in 2014, which held the record before, and 15 times Facebook’s IPO, blowing modern service giants Uber and Airbnb out of the water entirely.

SpaceX already made history by raising $75 billion on Thursday, and pulling off its anticipated IPO will make thousands of SpaceX employees millionaires and could push up Elon Musk’s net worth high enough to make him a trillionaire.

Here’s how $1.77 trillion squares with the top 20 biggest IPOs staged in the United States:

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd — $236.53 billion Facebook Inc — $118.48 billion Uber Technologies Inc — $98.75 billion AT&T Wireless Services Inc — $133.33 billion Rivian Automotive Inc — $80.18 billion Didi Global Inc — $75.19 billion United Parcel Service Inc — $119.79 billion Coupang Inc — $76.11 billion Ente Nazionale per l’Energia Elettrica (ENEL) — $109.28 billion Kraft Foods Inc — $101.27 billion Deutsche Telekom AG — $109.47 billion Banco Santander Brasil SA — $78.94 billion General Motors Co — $75.82 billion Visa Inc — $69.56 billion Airbnb Inc — $52.71 billion Gazprom — $79.85 billion Rocket Companies Inc — $46.39 billion Telefonica Moviles — $69.03 billion Blackstone — $54.93 billion Snowflake Inc — $43.73 billion

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

View Comments

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

Key Points

SpaceX is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday at an initial market value of about $1.77 trillion. The market's biggest IPOs have usually popped on day one, but most later traded below their offer prices. Lockup expirations have been a recurring source of pressure on newly public stocks.10 stocks we like better than Space Exploration Technologies ›

SpaceX is set to make stock market history. The rocket maker turned satellite internet and artificial intelligence (AI) conglomerate is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday, June 12, after selling about 555.6 million shares at a fixed price of $135 apiece. It will trade under the ticker SPCX. The $75 billion raise would be the largest from any initial public offering (IPO) ever -- more than double the $29.4 billion record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. And it gives the company an initial market value of about $1.77 trillion, instantly one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Anticipation among everyday investors seems just as outsized. SpaceX's prospectus names several retail brokerage platforms that will make shares available at the offer price, an unusual arrangement at this scale. Everyone else who wants in on Friday will pay whatever price the market sets at the open.

Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue »

So, what does history say about buying a debut of this magnitude on day one? Here are three lessons from the market's biggest IPOs.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. The first-day pop mostly rewards offer-price buyers

Big IPOs usually rise on their first day. But the headline gain is measured from the offer price, not from the price most investors can actually get. When Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba went public in 2014, its shares were priced at $68 and opened at $92.70 before closing at $93.89 -- a 38% first-day gain. That pop, however, went almost entirely to investors who received shares in the offering. Anyone who bought at the opening trade earned barely more than 1% by the close.

It can be worse. Visa priced its 2008 IPO at $44 and closed its first session 28% higher at $56.50. But the stock opened at $59.50, meaning investors who bought at the opening trade finished their first day down about 5%.

2. Patient buyers have usually been offered a better price

Here's the part of IPO history that gets less attention: each of the market's most celebrated debuts eventually traded below not just its first-day close but its offer price.

Meta Platforms, then known as Facebook, closed its first day in 2012 at $38.23, nearly flat against a $38 offer price. The stock then needed more than a year to climb back above that level. Alibaba slid below $68 less than a year after its debut. Even Visa, one of the market's great long-term winners, dipped below $44 by January 2009.

Chip designer Arm Holdings offers the most recent example. After pricing its 2023 IPO at $51 and closing its first day about 25% higher at $63.59, the stock was back at $51 within a week. Notably, that didn't make Arm a poor investment. Shares more than doubled from the offer price within their first year on the market. The lesson isn't that the biggest IPOs are doomed -- it's that investors who waited have usually been able to buy at or below the first day's price.

3. Lockup expirations are a known pressure point

Only about 4% of SpaceX's shares are being sold in the offering. The rest are largely held by insiders and early investors who are restricted from selling for now. And history shows what can happen when those restrictions lapse.

Meta's first lockup expiration in August 2012 freed about 271 million shares for sale, and the stock fell to about half its offer price around the event. SpaceX's prospectus lays out a staggered schedule of its own, with insider shares becoming eligible for sale in tranches tied to its first quarterly reports as a public company -- and CEO Elon Musk can't sell for a full year. As that new supply reaches the market, trading could remain volatile well beyond Friday.

What the playbook means for SpaceX (and interested investors)

None of this answers whether SpaceX deserves its price tag. That's maybe even a tougher debate than the one around which direction the stock will trade after the IPO. The company's revenue grew 33% year over year in 2025 to $18.7 billion, led by its Starlink-driven connectivity business, which generated $11.4 billion of that total and counted 10.3 million subscribers at the end of March. But the company also posted a $4.9 billion net loss last year, driven largely by its AI segment following the February acquisition of xAI. And at $135 per share, the stock is valued at about 95 times its 2025 revenue.

In my opinion, SpaceX looks overvalued.

Ultimately, Friday's headline numbers may say more about who got shares at $135 than about where the stock is headed. And investors who like the business may get chances to buy at better prices as lockups expire and early volatility plays out. So, for investors drawn to SpaceX, that may be the most useful takeaway of all: the decision doesn't have to be made in full at Friday's opening bell.

Should you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies right now?

Before you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Space Exploration Technologies wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $442,220! Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,230,114!

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 926% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 203% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 11, 2026.

Daniel Sparks and his clients have no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group and Arm Holdings. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

SpaceX beginnt am 12. Juni öffentlich zu handeln, mit einer Bewertung von etwa 1,77 Billionen US-Dollar und einem Angebotpreis von 135 US-Dollar pro Aktie. Retail-Investoren werden jedoch wahrscheinlich auf dem offenen Markt einen höheren Preis zahlen müssen. Aufgrund der geringen Angebotsmenge und der hohen Nachfrage könnte es zu einer erheblichen Ersttagssteigerung kommen, ähnlich wie bei vergangenen Mega-IPOs wie Alibaba und Rivian. Trotz des Hypes erscheint SpaceX jedoch überbewertet, und die Aktie könnte nach einem ersten Anstieg wieder auf den Boden zurückkehren.

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

Quick Read

SpaceX's $25B retail tranche alone matches Alibaba's all-time global IPO record and nearly doubles Visa's $17.9B 2008 U.S. record offering. Ritter identifies Starlink's low-cost launch flywheel as SpaceX's real engine, with connectivity revenue up 50% and subscribers nearly doubling in 2025. Ritter warns retail investors that at 40x sales and 170x EBITDA, even SpaceX's dominance doesn't guarantee a great stock. Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Alibaba didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, who runs the school's IPO Initiative and is widely regarded as the dean of IPO research, told CNBC on June 11, 2026, that SpaceX's pending offering will set a first-day underpricing record that dwarfs prior benchmarks held by Visa and Alibaba. "SpaceX is almost certainly going to blow them away," Ritter said, referring to the pop between the IPO price and opening trade.Maja Hitij / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The Elon Musk-led rocket and satellite company is priced at a $1.75 trillion valuation, which works out to roughly 40 times estimated 2026 sales and 170 times EBITDA. The company expects to raise about $75 billion in fresh capital from the IPO. According to the SPCX ticker scheduled to begin trading on NASDAQ on June 12, 2026, the deal carries an unprecedented retail allocation that Ritter argues changes the math for individual investors.

The Records Ritter Says Will Fall

Visa (NYSE:V) priced its March 2008 IPO at what was then the largest U.S. offering in history, raising roughly $17.9 billion. Since its debut, the payments network has returned 2,505.64% on a split-adjusted basis, with the stock at $318.78 as of June 10, 2026. SpaceX expects to raise about $75 billion from its upcoming IPO.

Visa's most recent quarter showed why the post-IPO compounder narrative persists: Q1 FY2026 net revenue of $10.90 billion (up 14.6% year over year) and non-GAAP EPS of $3.17, with CEO Ryan McInerney highlighting "our Visa as a Service stack" positioning the company as a "payments hyperscaler." The shares trade at a forward P/E of 21 with a price-to-sales ratio of 14.

Alibaba's $25 Billion Bar

Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) seized the global IPO record from Visa in September 2014 by raising roughly $25 billion. The retail tranche Ritter cites for SpaceX would match the entire size of Alibaba's deal on its own.

Alibaba's recent Q4 FY2026 revenue of $35.28 billion grew just 3% year over year, with adjusted EBITA falling 84% to $740 million as the company invested in AI. Cloud Intelligence Group external revenue accelerated to 40%, with CEO Eddie Wu telling investors that "AI-related products account for 30% of this revenue." The stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 0.3.

Story Continues

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Alibaba didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Valuing SpaceX On Future Growth

Ritter's valuation lens aligns with how the market treats unprofitable AI leaders. "My main metric is price to sales. Given that this company, as well as the AI giants, currently aren't profitable, they're growing rapidly. But SpaceX is being valued not on the past, but what could be," he said.

SpaceX's S-1 backs the growth case. SpaceX reported 2025 consolidated revenue of $18,674 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $6,584 million, with Q1 2026 revenue of $4,694 million. The Connectivity segment (Starlink) generated Q1 2026 income from operations of $1,188 million, and Segment Adjusted EBITDA of $2,087 million, profitable enough to fund the loss-making Space and AI segments.

On unit economics, Ritter focused on the flywheel between cheaper launch and cheaper bandwidth: "They've already got an 80% market share with Starship. That's likely to go to 100% due to the very low launch costs relative to the competition. But that's not an enormous market. But the lower launch costs are going to allow Starlink satellites to be put up at lower cost, allowing Starlink internet access to be available at lower cost. They're getting very good gross margins on that, and that could explode to be a much bigger business."

That thesis is reinforced by the filing's disclosure that 2025 Connectivity revenue grew $3,788 million, or 49.8%, with 99.9% growth in Starlink subscribers. The xAI segment acquired in February 2026 and orbital AI compute ambitions sit atop as speculative long-term optionality.

The Retail Warning

The unprecedented allocation flips the usual IPO dynamic. "With the retail tranche, that's going to be something like $25 billion of shares that retail investors are able to buy, which is bigger than the largest IPO in U.S. history by itself," Ritter said. That access cuts both ways, given the multiples involved.

Even exceptional businesses can deliver disappointing returns if investors pay too much up front. Ritter's reminder is worth keeping in mind as excitement builds: "A great company doesn't necessarily mean it's a great stock."

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Alibaba didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

View Comments

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

Die Aktien des E-Commerce-Unternehmens sind um 18% im Jahr zurückgegangen und werden durch einen aggressiven AI-Ausgabenplan gedrückt.

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

Wir haben einen bullischen Thesis auf r/ValueInvesting von Murky_Obligation_677 gefunden. In diesem Artikel werden wir die Bullen-Thesis zu PDD zusammenfassen. Der Aktienkurs von PDD Holdings Inc. lag am 26. Mai bei $96,64. Nach Yahoo Finance betrugen der trailing und forward P/E-Wert jeweils 9,74 bzw. 7,69. Maplebear (CART) Transformiert Online-Großhandel mit AI-gesteuerter Smart Shop.

PDD Holdings Inc., ein multinationaler Handelskonzern, der eine Portfolio von Unternehmen besitzt und betreibt. PDD wird als schnell wachsendes E-Commerce-Plattform dargestellt, die Marktanteile in China gewinnt und global durch Temu expandiert. Die Investitionsklage konzentriert sich auf das Anforderungsaggregationsmodell, das Verbraucher direkt mit Herstellern verbindet, Zwischenhändler eliminiert und Inventarrisiko reduziert, während es die Preisfindung verbessert. Dies ermöglichte es, Marktanteile von Alibaba und JD in einem zuvor reifen Markt zu gewinnen.

Die Sieg-Dynamik resultiert aus starken Netzwerkeffekten, die Skalierung, Liquidität und Monetarisierungs-Effizienz verstärken. Temu ist ein wichtiger globaler Wachstumsantrieb und ist bereits unter den meist heruntergeladenen Shopping-Apps weltweit. Das Unternehmen generiert starke Cashflow durch negatives Working Capital, da Benutzer und Händler vorab zahlen. Trotz hoher Investitionen in Akquisition und Logistik bleibt PDD netto-kassenpositiv. Die Bewertung zeigt ein Marktkapitalisierungswert von $145 Milliarden, was einem Enterprise-Wert von $75 Milliarden nach Cash entspricht, gegenüber $17-20 Milliarden normalisierten EBIT, je nach Marketing-Kapitalisierungsannahmen.

Dies impliziert einen tief abgesenkten Multiplikator für ein Hochrendite-Geschäft mit mehr als 50% ROIC. Selbst unter konservativen Annahmen bleibt PDD unterbewertet, wobei Temu zusätzliche Upside-Optionen bietet. Risiken umfassen China-Exposition und regulatorische Unsicherheit, obwohl langfristige Fundamentale positiv bleiben.

Die Plattformskaladvantag komponiert sich im Laufe der Zeit weiter, da mehr Liquidität die Zielgruppennutzungseffizienz verbessert und Kundenakquisitionskosten senkt, was die langfristige Dominanz verstärkt. Die Verwaltung ist noch in Wiederverwendung-Modus, priorisiert Wachstum gegenüber Buybacks, während das Ökosystem weiter skaliert. Der Gesamtupside wird durch Rerating, Temu-Monetarisierung und Normalisierung des Earnings-Potenzials getrieben, was eine potenzielle bedeutende Rerating über die Zeit schafft, da Skalierung global weiter beschleunigt.

Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!

SpaceX's IPO könnte am 12. Juni stattfinden und könnte mit über 1,7 Billionen US-Dollar der größte aller Zeiten werden. Das Unternehmen hat große Ambitionen, aber um diese zu erreichen, muss es stark investieren. ... Die SpaceX-Operation hat die Investorencommunity aufgewühlt, da sie sich aufgrund der Größe des IPO und der Perspektiven des Unternehmens interessiert zeigt. SpaceX operiert in den Bereichen Raketenstarts, satellitengestützter Internetdienste und künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) - und diese Märkte könnten enorme Wachstumschancen bieten. ... Geschichte bietet uns eine Antwort, die erstaunlich klar ist: Die größten US-IPOs haben in den meisten Fällen Verluste als Ertrag in ihrem ersten Jahr auf dem Aktienmarkt erwirtschaftet.