Wall Street prepares for a record-scale flotation that could reset valuation multiples across launch and satellite communications, shifting capital flows towards the best-capitalised players and putting fresh pressure on listed space peers.
This week, Sunnov Investment Pte. Ltd. circulates a readout of the biggest capital-markets question hanging over the space economy: SpaceX is lining up an initial public offering expected around mid-year, with bankers discussing a $1.5 trillion valuation and a $50 billion raise for the listing. If those numbers hold, the fundraising tops Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion total from its 2019 flotation and Alibaba’s $21.8 billion in 2014, turning a long-anticipated debut into a stress test for risk appetite.
Investor positioning helps explain why the talk intensifies now. Across the preceding four quarters, Rocket Lab, AST SpaceMobile and Planet Labs post gains of roughly 150% to 250%, a run that outpaces the S&P 500’s about 14% advance over the same period. The rally matters because it is not only a bet on one company’s rockets; it is an attempt to price the space stack as a new infrastructure layer, where launch, communications and data services converge.
SpaceX’s operating pace gives the market something concrete. In the latest full year of launches, the company logs 165 missions, and analysts’ revenue expectations for the latest annual period cluster around $15 billion to $16 billion. EBITDA estimates sit near $8 billion on that same annual basis, implying margins close to 50%. The tension is in the multiple: a $1.5 trillion valuation equates to more than 60 times sales on the latest revenue outlook, forcing investors to decide whether this is the new benchmark for the sector or a peak assumption.
In Sunnov Investment’s analysis, Thomas Gardner, Director of Private Equity at Sunnov Investment Pte. Ltd., frames the deal as “public markets underwriting a space platform, not a single product line”, with the balance sheet at the centre of the story. A $50 billion raise in the offering, at recent prices, exceeds Rocket Lab’s entire market capitalisation by about 30% and stands at roughly three times SpaceX’s cumulative funding since its founding. Gardner points to capital priorities that sit in plain sight, from Starship scaling to NASA-linked programmes and early-stage orbital data-centre concepts, all of which demand outsize spending before the pay-off shows up in reported earnings.
People familiar with the timetable continue to point to a mid-year window for the debut, with chief financial officer Bret Johnsen holding investor meetings since late last year to test valuation tolerance. The public listing talk also lands on top of a late-year secondary share sale that values SpaceX at roughly $800 billion, making the jump to $1.5 trillion a reminder of how quickly sentiment shifts when scarcity meets a public float. Gardner describes the hand-off as “private-market mythology giving way to public-market comparables”, a dynamic that pulls every listed space name into the same conversation, whether it seeks the attention or not.
The competitive implications show up first in launch economics. On the most recently available tallies, SpaceX carries more than 80% of global commercial payload mass to orbit, and Falcon 9 records more than 300 successful launches since entering service. Current published pricing puts a SpaceX launch at about $65 million, versus roughly $170 million for a disposable ULA Atlas V mission, a spread that pressures rivals and concentrates capital where reliability meets scale.
In broadband, Starlink’s latest disclosed counts show about 3 million subscribers and more than 6,000 satellites on-orbit, while incumbents report shrinking bases. Hughes sits near 0.7 million subscribers in its most recent mid-year update, versus roughly 1.1 million earlier in the decade, and Viasat reports about 0.3 million, versus about 0.6 million over a similar span. Starlink’s direct-to-cell service now spans 22 countries across six continents in its current rollout, and Gardner characterises the model as “recurring cash flows funding hardware velocity”, a mix that can redraw competitive moats quickly.
Markets are already trading the second-order effects. Over the past several sessions, EchoStar rises about 40%, Rocket Lab gains about 35% and AST SpaceMobile advances about 30%, signalling positioning ahead of a headline event. Sunnov Investment outlines three outcomes to watch over the coming quarters: a valuation uplift that makes existing listed space names look comparatively inexpensive, a consolidation cycle as a newly capitalised SpaceX tightens competitive pressure, and a capital rotation that drains liquidity from smaller peers. Gardner’s view that “capital allocation becomes competitive strategy in real time” captures why the months ahead matter for every company tied to launch, satellites and space-enabled data.
Sunnov Investment is a Singapore-based investment manager established in 2012, serving accredited investors, foundations and endowments worldwide. The firm runs long-only equity strategies, complemented by long/short equity, global macro, event-driven and systematic mandates, and it builds structured routes for eligible retail participation.
Website: https://sunnov.com
Media enquiries: Deng Hui at d.hui@sunnov.com
Registered entity: Sunnov Investment Pte. Ltd., UEN 201225494E.