SpaceX shares fell below their $135 initial public offering price for the first time on Wednesday, slipping 1.5 percent to $134 and handing paper losses to anyone who bought the biggest IPO ever just over a month ago. The drop trimmed the company’s market value to about $1.75 trillion, down from the $2.6 trillion peak that briefly made it worth more than Microsoft and Amazon, firms with longer public track records and actual profits.
The reversal came after SpaceX tapped the bond market for $25 billion last month to fund AI infrastructure spending whose return prospects remain hotly debated. Capital.com analyst Daniela Hathorn described the retreat as a mix of profit-taking, valuation reassessment and the unwinding of extremely bullish positioning that accompanied one of the most anticipated debuts in years. It is not uncommon for a stock to trade below its offer price during periods of broader market stress, though the slide does little to quiet critics who note the company lost $4.9 billion last year and has yet to prove many of its grandest ambitions.
Interactive Brokers chief strategist Steve Sosnick put it more bluntly: there has been nothing lately to remind investors why they bought in the first place. Inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 failed to arrest the decline; shares have fallen roughly 13 percent since that milestone. The fact that a stock has dipped a few dollars below its IPO price is not a tragedy on its own, but SpaceX occupies an outsize role in the investor psyche, and the symbolism matters.
The next test arrives in the first week of August, when the company reports its first quarterly results as a public entity. Shortly after, the initial lock-up period expires, freeing employees and early shareholders to sell, an event analysts say could add further pressure. Also looming is the 13th Starship test flight, whose success is critical to lowering launch costs and enabling the orbital data centers and lunar missions that underpin the long-term bull case.
As Parmar noted, the experiment is roughly 30 days old. Elon Musk secured $85 billion to take SpaceX to its next growth phase, a process that will take years to play out, not 30 days of trading. The market’s attention span, as ever, is shorter.