--- title: "SpaceX Continues to Post Losses, Yet Valuation Hits $1.8 Trillion: How Musk Sells \"Faith\" at Sky-High Prices?" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/289291007.md" description: "By leveraging grand narratives such as \"Mars colonization\" and the \"AI future,\" Musk has successfully ignited retail investor frenzy. He not only significantly increased the allocation ratio for retail investors and lowered subscription thresholds but also utilized Nasdaq's fast-track inclusion mechanism to push this \"faith-based trade\" to ordinary investors across the United States" datetime: "2026-06-10T07:57:25.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/289291007.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/289291007.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/289291007.md) --- # SpaceX Continues to Post Losses, Yet Valuation Hits $1.8 Trillion: How Musk Sells "Faith" at Sky-High Prices? The largest IPO in history is imminent. Musk plans to raise nearly $75 billion through SpaceX's public listing, pushing the valuation of this consistently loss-making company to approximately $1.77 trillion and potentially becoming the world's first trillionaire. Underpinning this feast is a retail investor faith carefully cultivated by Musk—rather than traditional financial fundamentals. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal on the 10th, SpaceX shares are expected to officially list on Friday, with a target issue price of $135 per share. Musk has reserved about 20% or more of the IPO shares for retail investors, far exceeding the industry norm of 5% to 7%. Major brokerages generally expect subscription demand to significantly outstrip supply. Nasdaq has agreed to open a fast track for SpaceX, allowing it to be included in the Nasdaq-100 Index after just 15 trading days post-listing; the S&P 500 Index, however, rejected a similar application on Thursday, citing profitability requirements. The core contradiction of this IPO lies in the fact that SpaceX reported a net loss of $4.9 billion last year, with losses widening further in the first quarter of this year. Yet, based on the target issue price, the company's price-to-sales (P/S) ratio stands at a staggering approximately 93.6 times, far above the S&P 500's overall level of about 3.3 times. **Supporting this sky-high valuation is Musk's visionary narrative of interstellar colonization and artificial intelligence, rather than current financial figures.** Nasdaq-100's fast-track inclusion means that SpaceX stock will almost immediately enter the index funds held by tens of millions of ordinary households across the US. Meanwhile, staggered unlock arrangements for restricted shares will allow more stock to flow into the market earlier than usual, potentially exerting downward pressure on the share price. Professional investors warn that the most robust retail subscription enthusiasm in history is building momentum for an extremely volatile post-listing performance. ## The Rise of Retail Investors: A New Pricing Force in the Market Over the past five years, retail investors have risen from the margins of the market to become an 不可忽视 (cannot be ignored) pricing force. According to data from Citadel Securities, the total volume of retail stock and options trading both hit record highs in May this year. The rise of this force has its historical context. In 2013, Robinhood launched its commission-free trading app, allowing ordinary investors to participate in the stock market with extremely low barriers for the first time. During the pandemic, the combination of home confinement and government subsidy funds gave birth to a new generation of day traders, ultimately culminating in the "Meme Stock" frenzy that caught Wall Street's attention—stocks like GameStop were pushed to astonishing highs by retail investor cohorts, a movement that also drew significant attention from Musk. **Today, retail influence has spread to the IPO market.** Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev stated this spring that while companies previously had to "beg" issuers for allocations in their IPO access programs, now "almost every major large-scale IPO has appeared on the Robinhood platform." After SpaceX's prospectus was made public on May 20, traffic to Charles Schwab's IPO page immediately tripled. Mike Treacy, Chief Market Analyst at Apex Fintech Solutions, described the current situation as a "perfect storm of retail frenzy." ## Musk's Retail Complex: From Promise to Fulfillment Musk deeply understands how to mobilize retail enthusiasm. At Tesla, retail holdings account for about one-third of the shareholder base. It is precisely this belief and passion that supported Tesla's market capitalization surpassing the combined value of the world's 30 largest automakers—despite ranking only 12th in US auto sales. In 2020, Musk wrote in a tweet: > "I am a huge fan of small retail investors. (If SpaceX or Starlink goes public,) I will ensure they get priority allocation. You can take my word for it." With this IPO, Musk has at least partially fulfilled this promise. **To further lower the barrier to entry, Robinhood has set no minimum account balance requirement for the SpaceX IPO; Fidelity, which typically requires account balances of $100,000 to $500,000 to participate in IPOs, has lowered the threshold to $2,000 for this offering.** Financial institutions have also sensed business opportunities. According to media reports citing insiders, Merrill Lynch's Houston branch held an information session for clients last week regarding the SpaceX IPO, where attendees received baseball caps printed with the SpaceX logo. ## The Valuation Puzzle: Sky-High Prices Propped Up by Faith There is a striking disparity between SpaceX's financial profile and the valuation granted by the market. The company generated $18.7 billion in revenue last year with a net loss of $4.9 billion, and losses widened further in the first quarter of this year. Based on the target issue price of $135, the company's valuation is approximately $1.77 trillion, corresponding to a P/S ratio of about 93.6 times. In contrast, the overall P/S ratio of the S&P 500 Index is only about 3.3 times. The core logic driving the valuation stems from visionary expectations of the future. As previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, Morgan Stanley's analysis predicts that SpaceX's revenue could reach $3.4 trillion by 2040. Several Wall Street veterans pointed out that **retail investors are unlikely to carefully study P/E ratios or cash flow analyses before clicking "Buy"; instead, they are more swayed by Musk's long-term vision—rockets, robots, AI, and space data centers.** Deen Noory, a 41-year-old fintech entrepreneur, has decided to buy on the listing day, stating bluntly: > "It's an infinitely vast industry with Elon Musk at the helm—what is there to think about?" ## Fast-Track Nasdaq Inclusion: Risk Enters Households Across the Nation The fast-track inclusion channel opened by Nasdaq for SpaceX compresses the waiting period from the usual maximum of one year to just 15 trading days. This means that SpaceX stock will almost immediately appear in various index funds held by ordinary households across the US. The S&P 500 Index rejected a similar application on Thursday, insisting on maintaining its profitability requirements—SpaceX, with a net loss of $4.9 billion, currently does not meet the criteria for inclusion. Furthermore, SpaceX has established staggered unlock arrangements for restricted shares, meaning that more stock will flow into the market earlier than is typical for newly listed companies, potentially exerting additional pressure on the share price. The current market environment is also unsettled: the rapid reversal in semiconductor stocks last week caused the Nasdaq Composite Index to fall 4.2% in a single day, marking its largest single-day drop in over a year. ## Institutions Profit, Retail Takes the Baton? During its more than twenty years of private operation, SpaceX has undergone multiple rounds of financing. Institutional investors, including the world's largest asset management companies, mutual funds, and large endowments, have already entered in large numbers. The company's valuation has grown by over 2,000% in the past few years, with ordinary investors largely absent from this wealth accumulation process. Critics argue that **the easy period of appreciation is over, and institutional investors are now looking for buyers to take over their positions.** "I think most retail investors should avoid this stock like the plague," said Dave Nadig, a senior fund analyst, who expects extreme volatility in the stock price in the weeks following the listing. Historical data collected by Jay Ritter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida, shows that about one-quarter of IPO stocks lose at least half their value within three years of listing. Jeff Judge, a financial planner in Maryland, was straightforward: > "Most of the interest is emotionally driven, to be honest. People just want to own a small piece of Elon Musk's rocket company." The ambivalent mindset of retail investors is reflected in two distinctly different voices. Josh Hill, a sales manager in North Carolina, plans to stay glued to Robinhood on the listing day but admitted, "Unless the price drops, I probably won't buy." Meanwhile, 70-year-old retired doctor Randal Brown has made up his mind: "Musk is a superstar. 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