Space Exploration Technologies completed its initial public offering on June 13, 2026, with shares trading above the $98 strike price across Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, SoFi, and Morgan Stanley's E-Trade. The company raised $6.8 billion at a fully diluted valuation of $142 billion, making it the largest U.S. IPO since Rivian in November 2021. First-day trading closed 7.2% above pricing, defying the so-called 55% rule—a historical pattern suggesting investors avoid IPOs that surge more than 55% in pre-market hype.

The allocation structure departed from typical tech offerings. SpaceX reserved 18% of the float for retail distribution, triple the sector median of 6%, and routed those shares through five named platforms rather than a single lead underwriter's captive channel. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs co-led the book, but pricing discipline held. The company priced at the low end of its $98-$112 range after trimming 22 million shares from the original filing. Institutional appetite centered on the Starlink revenue stream, which posted $8.9 billion in trailing twelve-month sales with 43% EBITDA margins.

The retail allocation mechanics matter for three reasons. First, the five-platform distribution creates a secondary market footprint that traditional IPO lockups don't account for—retail holders churn faster, compressing the typical 180-day institutional overhang into 60-90 days. Second, the 18% retail slice signals management's intent to build a shareholder base less vulnerable to quarter-to-quarter earnings misses, a structural advantage in capital-intensive infrastructure businesses. Third, platform-specific allocation rules varied: Fidelity required $100,000 minimum balances, Robinhood used a lottery system, Schwab allocated pro-rata to active traders. This fragmentation makes early price discovery noisier but stabilizes once the first 30 days of trading settle.

Allocators should track three follow-on events. The first lockup expiry hits December 10, 2026, releasing 340 million shares held by early employees and venture backers. The second is Starlink's planned spin-off filing, expected in Q1 2027, which would unbundle the satellite-internet business and force a re-rating of the core launch operations. The third is NASA's Artemis III contract decision in September 2026, a $4.2 billion award that SpaceX is bidding against Blue Origin to secure. That contract would derisk the deep-space revenue model and shift consensus estimates 12-15% higher.

The company trades at 22x forward EBITDA on the blended Starlink-launch model, a 30% discount to comparable infrastructure plays like American Tower. Retail participation at this scale hasn't been tested since Snowflake in 2020, and that stock gave back 18% in the first 90 days before stabilizing. The difference here is revenue durability—89% of Starlink subscribers renew annually, and launch manifest backlog stretches through Q4 2028.