NEW YORK: SpaceX shares jumped for a second straight day bringing them close to breaking back above the company\u2019s US$135 initial public offering (IPO) price for the first time since falling below the key level last month.<\/p>\n
Last Friday\u2019s 16% surge brought the stock\u2019s two-day rally to about 23%, adding more than US$327bil in market value over that span. Investors snapped up shares of the Elon Musk (pic)-led rocket, space and artificial intelligence (AI) company even as restrictions blocking some early insiders from selling were lifted last Thursday.<\/p>\n
Analysts had warned that the end of the first lockup could lead to selling pressure on the stock.<\/p>\n
The lockup expiration more than doubled the total number of shares available to trade to 1.55 billion from the 639 million in circulation when Space Exploration Technologies Corp, as it\u2019s formally known, went public.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce the dust settles from the trading around the end of the lockup period, investors are going to have to decide whether they\u2019re willing to pay such an expensive price for a company that will not show its full promise for many years,\u201d said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak.<\/p>\n
The move is a swift reversal for the stock that had been under pressure, shedding more than US$1 trillion in market value from the high it hit shortly after its record IPO.<\/p>\n
Shares faced additional pressure earlier in the week after the company\u2019s first public earnings release, falling 14% last Wednesday after SpaceX reported higher-than-expected spending on its AI business.<\/p>\n
More than 250 million SpaceX shares have been sold short, or about 16% of those available to be traded, according to data from S3 Partners LLC.<\/p>\n
That figure had topped 36% last Wednesday before the 911.5 million shares were unlocked for trading.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure there were some bearish bets that had to be unwound today,\u201d Maley added.<\/p>\n
Before the two-day rally, short sellers had amassed paper gains of more than US$9bil betting on the stock\u2019s slump.<\/p>\n
Of course, while the share lockup expiration gives early investors the option to sell their stakes, it is not a requirement. And, Wall Street has maintained an overwhelmingly bullish view on the company.<\/p>\n
Argus Research upgraded its rating on the shares to \u201cbuy\u201d from \u201chold\u201d last Friday, saying it was encouraged by \u201crapid payback\u201d on the firm\u2019s AI infrastructure investments.<\/p>\n
All told, nearly 80% of analysts covering SpaceX have given the stock a \u201cbuy\u201d rating.<\/p>\n
Their average price target of roughly US$221 implies more than 65% upside from where shares closed last Friday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. \u2014 Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK: SpaceX shares jumped for a second straight day bringing them close to breaking back above the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,165239,164,6888,64],"class_list":["post-852843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-corporate-news","tag-ipo","tag-spacex","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}