SpaceX closed Thursday at $134.72, breaching its $135 IPO price for the first time since the February offering that valued the company at $487 billion. The stock shed $52.28 per share from its March 14 peak of $187, erasing roughly $87 billion in market capitalization in 21 trading sessions. The company entered the Nasdaq-100 index on March 21. Six sessions later, it trades below the price institutional allocators paid four weeks ago.
The IPO itself was record-setting—$42.7 billion raised at $135 per share, the largest U.S. public offering in history. Underwriters Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan priced the deal at the high end of the $125-$135 range after oversubscription reportedly exceeded 18 times the shares available. Retail allocation was capped at 11 percent. The first-day pop to $164 generated $48.3 billion in paper gains for early buyers. That margin disappeared by March 28.
Three factors converge. First, the Treasury curve steepened 34 basis points since March 10, with the 10-year yield climbing to 4.47 percent as of Thursday's close. Growth equity multiples compress when the risk-free rate rises—SpaceX trades at roughly 87 times trailing twelve-month revenue, a valuation that assumes flawless execution on Starship production, Starlink's path to 12 million subscribers by year-end, and the NASA Artemis contract delivering $11.8 billion in milestone payments through 2028. Second, Musk diverted attention. He spent 14 hours on X Spaces discussing xAI's Grok-3 model and posted 83 times about Dogecoin in the week ending March 26, per social analytics firm Yonda. Markets price founder focus. Third, two sell-side analysts initiated coverage below Street consensus—Bernstein at $155 (Market Perform) and Redburn Atlantic at $148 (Neutral)—citing Starship's 18-month delay risk and Starlink's customer acquisition cost, which they model at $1,340 per subscriber against an average revenue per user of $87 monthly.
The IPO reference class matters. Meta fell 26 percent below its $38 May 2012 offering price within 90 days, then required 15 months to reclaim that level. Snap traded below its $17 March 2017 IPO price for 1,038 days. Uber breached its $45 May 2019 price within 72 hours and stayed underwater for 16 months. Of the 127 U.S. IPOs exceeding $5 billion in gross proceeds since 2010, 58—or 46 percent—traded below offer within six months, per Dealogic data. The median time to recovery: 11.3 months. SpaceX is performing in line with this cohort, not defying it. The exceptional variable is scale. At $135, the company still commands a market capitalization of $487 billion, larger than Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon Technologies combined. The valuation leaves minimal room for execution variance.
Allocators should monitor three near-term catalysts. Starship Flight 8 is scheduled for late April, targeting a controlled booster catch and orbital payload deployment—success moves the stock, failure accelerates the slide. Starlink Q1 earnings release is expected by April 18, with subscriber growth and ARPU the binding constraints on the bull case. The company guided to 8.7 million subscribers by March 31; missing that figure by more than 4 percent invites multiple compression. NASA's Artemis III contract review occurs in early May, and any timeline extension beyond the current September 2026 moon landing target will pressure the $11.8 billion revenue assumption embedded in sell-side models. Lock-up expiration is July 14—1.2 billion shares held by employees and early investors become eligible for sale, equivalent to 33 percent of the float.
The IPO price is now resistance, not support. The next technical level sits at $128, the 50-day moving average as of Thursday. Below that, $115 marks the volume-weighted average price from the roadshow period, where institutional buyers conducted private diligence. SpaceX will either earn its valuation in the next six quarters, or it will trade like the other 58.
The takeaway
SpaceX broke its $135 IPO floor after shedding $87 billion in 30 days—now it trades like the other 46 percent.
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