Shares of SpaceX continued their sharp descent Thursday and closed below the company’s IPO price for the first time since its June public offering.
The rocket maker’s shares slid more than 3% to close at $131.11. On June 11, the company had priced its record-setting IPO at $135 per share.
Later on Thursday, SpaceX shares fell as low at $124 per share in after-hours trading, after the company delayed the launch of its flagship Starship rocket. This was to be the company’s first space launch since it went public.
Designed to be reusable, the rocket is a cornerstone of SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s plans to expand satellite-based communications, send humans into space and, in theory, put AI data centers in orbit.
The company, whose businesses include Starlink satellite internet, the X social network and the artificial intelligence firm xAI, began trading on the Nasdaq exchange June 12.
While the company had a strong debut, with shares soaring 19% on their first day of trading to as high as $193, it’s largely been on a downward trajectory since then.
Even after being added to the prestigious Nasdaq 100 and Russell 1000 stock indexes, which ordinarily would have sparked buying, the stock has fallen every single day, except for one, since then.
Making matters worse for the stock, just days after raising $75 billion in its IPO, SpaceX issued $25 billion worth of additional debt.
Short sellers have also piled onto the company, and their paper bets are now reportedly approaching $4 billion.
Investors, many of whom were regular retail investors, who bought SpaceX shares at its Day 1 opening price of $150 have seen that investment contract by more than 11%.
SpaceX’s market value has also shrunk by more than $1.2 trillion from its peak, which it hit June 16. From its debut price of $150, the company’s value has contracted by almost $250 billion.
Musk, whose fortune now rests primarily in his SpaceX stake, saw his net worth surge from about $700 billion to as much as $1.32 trillion after the IPO. However, that has contracted along with shares, to about $850 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Musk has been unflinching in his confidence about the company. Shortly after the IPO, he wrote on social media that “SpaceX might be able to reach approximately $1T revenue in 2030.”
Despite a rocky few weeks of trading, Wall Street analysts are largely bullish on the company’s future.
But the pain for SpaceX shares could be just getting started. In the weeks ahead, SpaceX will likely issue its first earnings report as a public company. That event will trigger the first wave of stock-sale lockups expiring. This means some longtime shareholders would be allowed to begin selling their shares and cashing in on what were, for years, merely paper gains.
It’s not entirely unusual for a major IPO to perform poorly in the short term, however. When Facebook, now called Meta Platforms, debuted in 2012, its shares traded below its IPO price for more than a year. Uber also traded below its IPO price for months after its 2019 offering.
But these dips reversed themselves over time. As of Thursday, Meta shares were up more than 1,600% since its IPO, while Uber has posted a nearly 80% gain since its debut.
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