Banks set to rake in $500M from historic SpaceX public debut

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is aggressively squeezing Wall Street’s top investment banks, negotiating base underwriting fees of under 0.75% for its record-breaking initial public offering (IPO) scheduled for later this month.

Even with the heavily discounted fee structure, the elite syndicate of global banks handling the listing is poised to rake in a staggering $500 million payout, driven entirely by the unprecedented scale of the capital raise, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.

According to financial sources, SpaceX aims to raise approximately $75 billion during the stock market debut, targeting an astronomical overall company valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion. The blockbuster listing is widely anticipated to be the largest and most consequential public market debut in corporate history, finally granting retail and institutional investors direct access to Musk's sprawling aerospace, Starlink satellite broadband, and defense AI empire.

The offering is being led by a powerhouse lineup of joint book-running managers, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Citigroup, and J.P. Morgan, anchoring a broader syndicate of 21 additional brokerage firms. The two lead institutions—Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—are currently positioned to capture the lion's share of the final $500 million fee pool. The sub-0.75% figure represents only the baseline fee and does not account for potential discretionary bonuses or performance-based financial incentives that SpaceX may award upon a successful launch.

A fee structure this low is exceptionally rare in the IPO market, where banks typically demand anywhere from 3% to 7% of gross proceeds from smaller companies. However, the sheer volume of the SpaceX capital raise grants the company immense leverage. Wall Street historical precedents for such cut-rate fees are few and far between; notably, General Motors negotiated a similar 0.75% underwriting fee with the U.S. government during its massive post-bailout common stock sale in 2010.

The timeline for the historic market debut is moving rapidly. The company is expected to kick off its official investor roadshow on Thursday, June 4, setting the stage for SpaceX shares to begin trading publicly as early as June 12.

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada