More than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees stand to gain life-changing wealth as the rocket company prepares to debut on Nasdaq
Ethan Swope / Bloomberg via Getty Images
SpaceX's initial public offering is expected to turn more than 4,400 current and former employees into millionaires, according to The New York Times. Among its 22,000-person workforce — plus the hundreds who have departed over the years — a large share are engineers who took below-market pay with the expectation that equity would eventually make up the difference.
Launch engineer Trevor Hise turned down more conventional career paths to stay at SpaceX after a 2011 internship, accumulating more than 100,000 shares over the dozen years he spent at the company. At the targeted listing price of $135 per share, that position translates to a minimum value of $13.5 million. "The magnitude of this has been ridiculous," Hise, 37, said.
SpaceX is set to debut on Nasdaq $NDAQ under the ticker symbol SPCX. The company filed terms for its IPO disclosing plans to sell 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock at $135 apiece, which would raise close to $75 billion at a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion — a figure that would rank it among the 10 most valuable U.S.-listed companies. The offering would eclipse the record set by Saudi Aramco's 2019 debut, which raised $29.4 billion.
Orders totaling around $150 billion poured in from institutional investors before the book-close deadline — roughly twice the amount SpaceX hopes to collect.
Looking ahead to their post-IPO finances, a cohort of over 100 SpaceX employees and alumni has negotiated a collective wealth management arrangement with Choreo, a Chicago-based registered investment advisor. The group represents potential wealth of between $1 billion and $5 billion, according to CNBC, citing unnamed sources. Participants who opt in would pay a fee below the 0.5% threshold — undercutting what wealth advisors typically charge, which generally falls somewhere between 0.5% and 1% of assets annually.
Despite the coming windfall, most employees will face restrictions on selling their stock immediately. Restrictions on selling will apply to over three-fifths of pre-offering shares. CEO Elon Musk's shares are locked up for 366 days after the final prospectus is filed.
SpaceX also reserved up to 5% of outstanding common stock for certain employees and individuals selected by its executive officers through a directed share program, with those participants exempt from lockup requirements.
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