By Anirban Sen and Echo Wang
NEW YORK, March 10 (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker SpaceX is leaning toward listing its shares on the Nasdaq for what could rank as the biggest initial public offering of all time, according to four people familiar with the company’s thinking.
SpaceX wants early inclusion on the Nasdaq 100 index, making it a necessary condition for a potential listing on the tech-heavy exchange, two of the people said. Its plans could still change, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are confidential.
Reuters has previously reported that SpaceX is planning an IPO, as early as June.
The New York Stock Exchange is also competing for the listing, and neither exchange has been informed of a decision either way, multiple people said.
The Nasdaq 100, owned by Nasdaq Inc, is seen as a premier blue-chip index by large institutional investors and serves as a barometer for the health of most of the world’s biggest publicly traded names, including megacap technology stocks like Nvidia, Apple and Amazon.com. The Nasdaq 100 gained about 21% last year and is slightly lower so far this year.
Nasdaq proposed a new rule last month that could potentially speed up the addition of newly listed megacap companies to the Nasdaq 100 index.
NASDAQ’S NEW FAST-TRACK RULE
The proposed change, which is not final and could take several months to take effect, is designed to entice richly valued private companies like SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI, among others, to list on the exchange.
Under the Nasdaq’s proposed “Fast Entry” rule, a newly listed company would be eligible for accelerated inclusion in just under a month if its market capitalization ranks among the index’s top 40 current members. SpaceX is seeking a valuation of around $1.75 trillion for the IPO, one of the people said, which would make it the sixth-largest company by market value in the U.S., based on the latest share prices.
Newly listed companies currently have to wait up to a year before they are eligible for entry into major indexes like the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq 100, first needing to demonstrate to investors that they are stable enough to handle the volume of buy orders from institutional investors.
INDEX MEMBER BENEFITS
Admission to a blue-chip index like the Nasdaq 100 or the S&P 500 gives companies increased access to the deep-pocketed institutional investors who typically buy sizable positions for their own index funds, broadening their shareholder base and improving liquidity over time. While the NYSE has a similar index that tracks its 100 largest U.S. stocks, it is less widely followed by investors, making inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 especially influential for megacap IPOs.
For executives and early investors, that deeper liquidity could reduce the market impact of large sell orders once lockup periods expire, typically 90 to 180 days after an IPO, though it is no guarantee that a large wave of insider selling will not still weigh on the share price.
SpaceX did not return requests for comment.
Reuters reported in February that advisers for SpaceX have reached out to major index providers including Nasdaq to discuss joining key indexes sooner than normal.
SpaceX’s stock market debut is expected to be the highlight of what is shaping up as one of the busiest years for IPOs in recent memory, with several high-profile venture-backed companies and startups including OpenAI and Anthropic laying the groundwork for their respective debuts.
(Reporting by Anirban Sen and Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Dawn Kopecki, Megan Davies and Matthew Lewis)
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