Cheques and Balances
SpaceX IPO Explained: Should You Buy the Biggest IPO Ever? | Episode 479
03 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the biggest IPO in history and why is it significant?
We are back in your life and today should you buy the biggest IPO in history? We're talking about SpaceX. Now, Mike, we should point out as a starting point, this is not personalized financial advice.
Feels like personalized financial advice, James. I mean, the heating definitely did feel like personalized financial advice. But it's not. What we're here to talk about today is obviously biggest IPO in history, right? Big deal. It's going to be massive. Big deal.
When we look at this from an investing perspective, from an advice perspective, from a fundamentals perspective, there potentially is some issues here. So we're here to just go, hey, look, there's hype. If you're going to invest in stuff, know what you're doing. And you can already tell what Michael's opinion is.
So, I mean, it is, yep, there's definitely some things to talk to in terms of what's going on. Yeah. But it's also quite interesting. It's just a big, like, if you remove the Musk factor, some of the underlying questions, it's such a huge deal in terms of the size of the IPO.
Yeah, 100%. That's why I think we should dig into it. James, you're Mr. Shares, you're Mr. Stocks, you're Mr. Money Man. What is an IPO? What are we actually doing here?
It's an initial public offering. So when a company goes from being a private company. So I own it. Yeah, we get to just go do our own thing. We get to go out for lunch. Buy REITs. Buy REITs. Shout out to the quarterly update where Mike called infrastructure big daddy REITs.
But it's essentially when a company decides that they want to allow for others to be able to buy into the company in a public setting. And why would you do that? Because they want to raise money. They want to raise money and give investors access.
It also creates a market price for the business because when you are sitting within a private business, obviously there's a question all the time around what is the value of the company, the liquidity of the shares, et cetera.
Yeah. So let's say James and I started a company and we called it Checks and Balances Limited. We own it 50. Actually, I own 51%. James owns 49%. I feel like I trust him.
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Chapter 2: What does an IPO mean and how does it work?
I don't know how they filed confidentially yet. We know with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, April 2026, targeting a valuation of SpaceX of $1.75 to $2 trillion. Now, When you say those sort of things, you get no concept of the size of how much money that is and how it stacks in terms of comparison to other points of time.
I also thought it was interesting the step that we found out yesterday around Apple selling a billion iPhones over eight years, which meant they had to sell 330,000 iPhones a day, which is, that's a billion. Yeah. But you think about a trillion.
A trillion.
It's a huge amount of money. So let me break down how big of a deal a trillion dollars is in comparison to other IPOs in history. If SpaceX hits its $2 trillion target, it will instantly become the sixth or seventh biggest company in the world likely sitting right behind Amazon at $2.2 trillion.
It's beating Saudi Aramco, the current record for the leading IPO in history, which is obviously the Saudi oil company, which debuted at roughly $1.7 trillion. If you compare it to other companies, SpaceX is looking to raise $75 billion. Facebook in 2012 was $16 billion. Alibaba was $25 billion. So Mike,
If we're talking about breaking records, it's doing something that really nobody's ever done before.
Yeah, 100%, right? And if you're comparing it to that club of companies, like, you know, you think about the profitability and the scale of Saudi Aramco Oil, this must be a phenomenally profitable company. Jimmy, tell me about the profits. Okay, so we just jump straight into it?
Tell me about the profits, James. So at the moment, SpaceX is losing $5 billion a year.
Yeah, so the revenue is about $15.6 billion and they're running at a bit of a loss. I mean, you know, not bad for a mom and pop space company, you know?
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Chapter 3: What valuation is SpaceX targeting and how does it compare to other companies?
What's the benefit? Well, if something happens to Earth. Like us? Yeah. So you're saying what we'll do is we'll ruin Earth, then we'll go to Mars and ruin Mars.
Well, I'm saying that, whoa, you don't even know if it's just going to be us. There could be anything could happen to the planet. We'd get hit by a comet. You don't know. Meteorite.
Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't get hit by a long range comet. You have a study space at university? No, I didn't. Oh, okay. Cool. Cool. Is there anything else that smells a little bit fishy about this one?
The question is, where do you really want to start? Probably. So if you look at it and go, well, if you're going to do an IPO, you need some people who are going to be interested in selling those companies. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, etc. They're involved in this IPO.
Essentially, Elon Musk has gone like, yo, if you want to be part of this and get your half a billion dollars worth of fees, you've got to use Grok. So for those that don't know, Grok is like an AI bot that SpaceX owns, which is sassy and also has no guardrails around what it can and can't do. Last year, we got quite a lot of trouble around essentially like child nudity and those sort of areas.
So... all of these um broking houses are now spending tens of millions of dollars to build grok into its systems yeah so they can get their half a billion dollars at the end of the day yeah i just like again um even that uh like that on its own yeah look he's he's just cutting a deal there fine whatever um
To me, that's still not the fishiest thing. The big thing for me here is the no lockup on the sales, right? So let's say we go back to our example of James and Mike have taken checks and balances limited to a public company, right? You guys, the viewers, have bought $50 million of our $100 million valuation and we've sold 50%. Reasonably speaking,
What you would want to know is that James and I are in this for the long haul, right? So James and I, we're going to be around by the time we're terraforming Mars with this thing. The issue is, what often happens is what's called a pump and dump. So to avoid a pump and dump, you have a lockup period on the shares, so we cannot sell them straight after the IPO. James?
It would be very normal for an IPO like this to not have a lockup, right? It would be extremely unusual.
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Chapter 4: Why is SpaceX currently unprofitable despite its high valuation?
Yeah. Because people, obviously, there was a lot of media coverage around it being like, what the hell is going on here? This doesn't make any sense. Yeah. So at the end of the day, like we've said, many times, you really shouldn't be investing into direct stocks. Because the question is, there is risk with all of these things.
And of course, when it comes to investing into direct stocks, there's upside. But do you know what you're doing? Or should you just be having a financial plan that is focused on good fundamentals of getting your income up, managing your expenses, paying down debt, buying investment property, and then investing into diversified shares?
Opposed to, I mean, Mike, people could become millionaires off the back of this IPO.
People will. 100% people will. There will be a lot of people who make a lot of money. There will be even more people who lose a lot of money.
Yeah. So let us know in the comment section what you think of the SpaceX IPO. Have we got this completely wrong? Is Mike just a hater? Or are we right? Give us a review, like, subscribe. We'll catch you next time. Cheers.
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