Space Companies Rocket Upward on SpaceX IPO Hype

SpaceX may be counting down to its IPO, but some people are just too impatient to wait for liftoff.

Just look at the share price of Intuitive Machines, which flew nearly 16% on Wednesday and is up more than 125% so far this year as the company transforms from a provider of niche lunar landing gear to an all-in-one infrastructure player at the dawn of a new space age.  It’s just one of several space-related companies riding the SpaceX gravitational pull straight to the moon. 

To the Moon And Back

The Houston, Texas-based company went public via a SPAC merger back in 2023 and, almost exactly a year later, its unmanned lunar lander, Odysseus, gained the distinction of delivering the first American spacecraft to the moon’s surface since the Apollo program. Space geeks may remember that Odysseus took a tumble upon said landing, compromising many of NASA’s goals, though both the company and the space agency ultimately described the mission as a success. A year later, Intuitive Machines once again sent a lander to the moon, though once again, it toppled over upon landing. 

Nevertheless, the company says it expects to increase its revenue nearly fivefold to $1 billion this year, as it cashes in on a surge in both public and commercial contracts to provide services ranging from satellite communications to data transmission. The SpaceX hype is so strong that investors hardly seem to care that Intuitive Machines lost a bid this week for NASA lunar landing contracts to Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. It’s hardly the only firm riding a boom in space spending and going for a ride ahead of the June 12 SpaceX IPO:

• Shares of AST SpaceMobile have climbed 67% over the past month, while Rocket Lab shares have gained more than 80% and Redwire shares have risen 157%.
• “SpaceX going public ​has acted as a lens to focus the investment community on space travel ⁠and related support systems,” Andersen Capital Management founder Pete Andersen recently told Reuters.

Tick, Tick, Boom: Unsurprisingly, however, the Elon Musk-related hype cycle has been met with an equal amount of skepticism. In fact, nearly one-fifth of commercially available AST shares have been shorted, as have 7% of Rocket Lab shares. It might be a sign that some investors have learned a lesson from so many SpaceX Starship launches: What goes up doesn’t always just come back down. It might explode.