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The Money Café with Alan Kohler

Blast Off: The SpaceX Float

17 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

12.097 - 18.367 Alan Kohler

Hello, I'm Alan Kohler, editor-at-large of Intelligent Investor and finance presenter, columnist and podcaster for the ABC.

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18.607 - 23.154 Stephen Mayne

And I'm Stephen Mayne, contributor at Intelligent Investor, founder of Crikey and shareholder activist.

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23.475 - 24.396 Alan Kohler

And what are we, Stephen?

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25.338 - 30.987 Stephen Mayne

If you ask me, Alan, we are the Money Cafe, taking a brief break from the World Cup to record a cafe.

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31.768 - 32.649 Alan Kohler

You're watching the World Cup, are you?

32.669 - 59.629 Stephen Mayne

You're watching the World Cup? I'm loving it. I'm absolutely loving it. So the French just had a good 3-1 win over Senegal. So they'll be now the warm favorites after the Spanish couldn't even get over Cape Verdeau yesterday. Right. And what about those Australians? Actually, I missed the 5 a.m. block square AGM in the U.S. this morning. I set the alarm. I was all set to go to it and slept in.

59.669 - 69.042 Stephen Mayne

I just missed it. So I'm not going to sleep in and miss the 5 o'clock start for the Australia-U.S. game in – Seattle on Saturday.

69.062 - 69.923 Alan Kohler

Are you watching it?

69.943 - 70.884 Stephen Mayne

Are you excited?

Chapter 2: What is the significance of the SpaceX float?

337.744 - 342.013 Stephen Mayne

Only about 0.7%, which was quite low, I thought. But yeah, they don't get a fee.

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342.453 - 352.673 Alan Kohler

Yeah, but it's 0.7% of a big number. The fees total $500 billion US. Yes. Yes. I mean, 500 million, I mean, still.

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353.014 - 365.357 Stephen Mayne

ComSec was only taking 0.2 on us because it's a fee on a fee. So Macquarie was running Australia, so Macquarie gets their cut, then they manage ComSec, they get their cut. But the overall fees were 0.7.

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365.618 - 379.005 Alan Kohler

Yeah, but they're all making tons of money on brokerage because there's so much trading going on. And Wall Street and the Australian brokers, they're all having a lovely time.

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379.446 - 390.638 Stephen Mayne

Yes, yes. But everything else is getting crowded out. You know, like Palantir stocks down 20% in June. Like crypto. So there is a crowding out factor, I reckon.

390.658 - 399.128 Alan Kohler

Yeah. No, you're right. And then we've got two more big IPOs coming, OpenAI and Anthropic. So they'll do some more crowding out.

399.631 - 422.552 Stephen Mayne

They will, and they'll certainly get those away, won't they? I mean, if Google can raise $85 billion in a secondary raise and then Elon can raise $85, then... I mean, the previous three years, they barely did $80 billion over three years in IPOs in the US. So they'll end up probably doing $300 billion this year. I mean, this is actual cash. It's not just paper.

422.572 - 446.362 Stephen Mayne

People have written $85 billion checks to Google and SpaceX in the last two weeks. That's never happened before. in public market land. So you'd be mad if you're NVIDIA and OpenAI not to tap this. If the public markets are so leaning in, then put your hand out. Take what you can get.

447.143 - 456.435 Stephen Mayne

Anyway, we've got a few questions on SpaceX later, but what do you think of the Iran peace deal or one and a half secret pages of it?

Chapter 3: How are AI IPOs impacting the market?

1559.634 - 1581.646 Stephen Mayne

So they've been far too generous with aged care and they need to be a lot more generous With childcare, I agree. I saw that figure of $100,000 a year. I mean, we had a full-time nanny for eight years when we were running Crikey. And if it's $100,000 for two kids, hire a full-time nanny, full-time person. That's not going to cost you $100,000 a year. That's right.

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1581.746 - 1599.768 Stephen Mayne

That's going to be $60,000 a year. So I think that there should be movement on the nanny's policy as well. But there's so much buildings going on. The capacity in the private childcare centre, every second corner now, it's almost like more childcare centres than poker machine venues in Australia now. There have been so many new ones built.

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1600.549 - 1620.757 Stephen Mayne

Because the barriers to entry to find people to sign the leases are so low. It's just very easy to be a couple, run a business, sign a lease to run a childcare centre from Peter Dutton down. Everyone's done it. So you can't unscramble that. But the government should look after the consumers more and make the cost of it more attractive in after-tax dollars particularly.

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1620.777 - 1635.964 Stephen Mayne

And I agree with you that allowing a big tax deduction on your childcare fees or your living, you know, actually would be a very sensible way to go given that our tax earners are paying such a huge amount of money to Canberra relative to other tax options the government's got.

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1636.13 - 1651.643 Alan Kohler

Well, and obviously it is clearly the cost of earning income. It qualifies as a tax deduction, I would have thought. Yeah. More so than negative gearing, a tax deduction on your investment property. Clearly.

1652.184 - 1663.654 Stephen Mayne

How does that make – I mean, the world's gone crazy when you put it in those terms, isn't it? Tax deduct your investment property but don't tax deduct the cost of looking after your kids so you can go to work. That's right. Fair dinkum. Wake up, Australia.

1664.855 - 1664.955

Yeah.

1665.779 - 1682.822 Alan Kohler

Katie says, I live in a regional Australian town of 3,000 people and 900 households. If every household eventually electrified, switching from gas appliances to electric, adding batteries and replacing petrol cars with EVs, it seems reasonable that each household would conservatively save around 3,000 per year on energy costs.

1683.263 - 1704.415 Alan Kohler

That equates to around 2.7 million for the town that stays in families' pockets rather than in the case of fuel disappears offshore. What do you think will be the long-term household and regional economic impacts of electrification and what might it mean for family budgets, local spending and economic resilience? Well, she's absolutely right, of course, Stephen, don't you think?

Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Trump–Iran peace deal?

1761.342 - 1785.262 Stephen Mayne

that the economics work better, but you can't just kill the gas industry and shut down all the coal. It's a rollout, but Australia's doing well. We just should keep investing in renewables and the savings will keep flowing. It's working well. Yes. Now, we've got two questions on SpaceX from James and Andrew about the index impact.

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1786.104 - 1809.461 Stephen Mayne

And it is true that SpaceX will be in the NASDAQ 100 index in 10 days' time. And it's only S&P which is holding the line, saying you've got to deliver a quarterly profit. Will Elon ever deliver a profit? So they might never get into the S&P because they might never deliver a quarterly profit. But they are going into some of the other ones, the Russell.

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1810.342 - 1838.819 Stephen Mayne

And this is driving a lot of the buying, I would argue. But there's the whole free float argument that Elon owns 47, 48% of the shares and more than 80% of the votes. And his shares are not in any index. So it's only what's called the free float. But I was amazed. The first day's trading, did you see that the first day's trading was about the same as the total number of shares issued?

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1838.959 - 1860.453 Stephen Mayne

So there were 555 million shares issued and the turnover on the first day was 530 or just under that amount. So, a lot of the existing holders did sell and that's going to be the game over the next year is, you know, Google can sell its 5% stake, currently worth $150 billion in June next year.

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1860.614 - 1882.288 Stephen Mayne

Elon can start selling and there's 90 million shares which are going to become available to be sold next. in the second week of August after the earnings results. So will we get the insiders selling down to the index investors, which has been the story of Chemist Warehouse and Sigma. Everyone said, oh, Sigma, Chemist Warehouse, not worth $35 billion.

1882.37 - 1905.367 Stephen Mayne

But the index investors have been buying off all the insiders and the insiders have gone out and bought $400 million worth of luxury property in the last 12 months as they've been selling out to the index investors. So it's a big thing. But I don't think it totally explains the mania that's driving the price. up, you know, 50%. I think that's more just a retail Elon hype thing.

1905.827 - 1906.408 Alan Kohler

I mean, what do you think?

1906.448 - 1908.891 Stephen Mayne

Is it index investing or what's driving this price?

1909.051 - 1931.523 Alan Kohler

Well, I think the index investing is a part of it for sure. I mean, the NASDAQ funds, passive funds will have to buy it clearly and everyone knows that and so they're getting ready. But, you know, I do think that's going to be a part of it for sure and it is going to support the price. But I think you're right. The main thing has been the hype, for sure.

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