By Niket Nishant and Shashwat Chauhan
March 27 (Reuters) – From rocket launches drawing millions of YouTube views to social media frenzy over its potential listing, SpaceX’s debut is shaping up to be a landmark moment for Wall Street.
Traders are betting thousands of dollars on the company’s ticker and speculating over its entry into the most elite club of U.S. companies, giving the world’s most valuable startup a level of social media buzz that only a few companies enjoy, especially when they are yet to file their IPO paperwork.
On Polymarket, users were betting on topics including the company’s targeted valuation, the exchange it will list on and the ticker its shares would trade under. The combined trading volume of such bets exceeded more than $15.2 million, as of Friday.
Odds on the prediction markets platform put a 25% chance on SpaceX choosing the letter “X” as its ticker, a sharp drop from 60% a month ago.
The single-letter ticker is up for grabs after U.S. Steel, which reportedly held it for over a century, delisted from the New York Stock Exchange after being bought by Japan’s Nippon Steel last year.
Musk’s social media platform is also called X after a rebrand from Twitter in 2023.
Tuttle Capital Management CEO Matthew Tuttle said a better alternative would be “SPCX” – also the ticker of an exchange traded fund his company manages.
Tuttle has indicated openness to selling the SPCX symbol to SpaceX.
“I’ve not heard from Elon, but my phone line is still open and I’m holding out hope that I get a call,” he said.
Apart from X, other potential options floated on Polymarket include “SPAX” and the risqué, “SEX”. However, users see a roughly 70% probability that the company chooses a different ticker altogether.
FROM MAGNIFICENT SEVEN TO SUPER EIGHT?
SpaceX is targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion in its listing, which would make it the sixth biggest U.S. company by market capitalization. Tesla and Meta Platforms could fall behind, with market valuations of $1.4 trillion and $1.39 trillion, respectively.
That has fueled speculation over whether the company’s market debut will force a rethink of the so-called “Magnificent Seven”, a group of some of the most valuable U.S. companies.
“When the company does finally go public, the Magnificent Seven will clearly expand. They’ll probably call it the Magnificent Eight, the Super Eight or some new acronym,” said Todd Schoenberger, chief investment officer at CrossCheck Management.
To capitalize on his popularity among retail investors, CEO Elon Musk is also discussing allocating as much as 30% of the IPO to individual investors, at least three times the usual retail slice, Reuters reported.
On social media platform Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets thread, SpaceX was mentioned 130 times over the past week and was the 19th most popular mention, according to data from Germany-based data group Breakout Point.
“The retail investor plays a very significant role when you have a company like SpaceX that’s coming public. Most people would say yes to the opportunity of investing in Elon Musk’s space company,” said Jonathan Corpina, senior managing partner for Meridian Equity Partners.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant and Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
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