SpaceX mira para a maior IPO do mundo em meio a temores de que está significativamente supervalorizada

The Unite union have reported that today's fire at a Tata production lines at Port Talbot has caused “substantial damage.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham explains:

I want to thank the emergency services for bringing the situation under control so quickly.

“Thankfully no one was injured in the fire and workers were evacuated safely.

“However, the fire did cause substantial damage to a vital production line.

“Measures must now be put in place to protect jobs both at Tata and down the supply chain during any period of disruption.

“Meanwhile we are asking Tata and the government to ensure that operations are rebuilt as swiftly as possible.â€

Ireland's domestic economy grew in the last quarter, while its wider GDP measure was dragged down by multinationals based in the country.

Modified Domestic Demand (MDD), which measures personal, government, and investment spending, grew by 0.6% in Q1 2026.

However, GDP shrank by over 12%.

Chris Sibley, the assistant director general with responsibility for National Accounts & Price Statistics, explains:

The globalised Industry sector contracted by 35.0% in Q1 2026 when compared with Q4 2025 while the Information & Communication sector posted a decrease of 2.0% over the same period. Overall, the multinational-dominated sector fell by 27.1% in the quarter.

However, there was continued growth in the domestic economy in Q1 2026. Modified Domestic Demand (MDD) grew by 0.6% in the quarter driven by personal spending which also increased by 0.6% while the non-multinational-dominated sector grew by 0.4% over the same period.â€

SpaceX's claim for such as huge valuation is based, in part, on its ambitions to eventually build bases on the Moon and a colony on Mars.

The company's filing for its stock market listing gushes about its plans to save humanity from disaster, saying:

For the entirety of its existence, human civilization has lived on a single celestial body: Earth. The current paradigm, in which human civilization is confined to one planet, exposes humanity to existential threats that are unpredictable and uncontrollable on a planetary scale.

By moving beyond the only home we have ever known, we ensure species-level redundancy and that the light of consciousness will not be tied to a single planet subject to the inevitable hazards of a harsh and vast universe.

We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs. We want to give them a reason to look ahead with excitement, with the prospect that we are entering an age of abundance with an endlessly prosperous and exciting future.

Over in the US, AI has been blamed for a job in company job cuts.

Recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas has reported that US-based employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, up 16% from the 83,387 job cuts recorded in April.

That's also 3% more than in May 2025, and the highest for any May since 2020.

The report found that AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs and the primary industry citing it is Technology.

Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says:

“On top of the headline AI story, we're seeing a sharp rise in cuts tied to acquisitions and mergers and a jump in bankruptcy-related losses, which tells me companies are restructuring aggressively as they reposition for an AI-driven economy.â€

Back in the markets, London's blue-chip share index is now in the red.

Following overnight losses on Wall Street and drops in Asia-Pacific, the FTSE 100 is now down 47 points or 0.46%.

Raffi Boyadjian, lead market analyst at Trading Point, reports:

Notably, Nasdaq futures are struggling the most after Broadcom slumped by around 13% in after-hours trading. Although earnings per share beat expectations, the AI chipmaker disappointed investors with its Q2 revenue as well as its guidance for Q3 revenue.

That knocked sentiment in South Korea, where the KOSPI index (which has been on a blistering run) fell 1.8%.

Asia-focused financial companies are leading the fallers in London, with Prudential and Standard Chartered both down by more than 6%.

A fire has broken out at Tata Steel's plant in south Wales, with the manufacturer saying it is too early to say whether the incident will affect its operations.

Emergency services attended the Port Talbot site at 8pm last night to deal with a fire at one of its processing lines, the company said in a statement. All staff were accounted for and evacuated to safety, it said.

As of 7am this morning, emergency services were still at Port Talbot, working to completely extinguish the fire, the company said.

Tata Steel also added that the fire is not related to the “safe and successful demolition of the empty, redundant gas holder earlier yesterday eveningâ€.

People living near the plant are being asked to stay inside, keep windows and doors closed and to avoid the area where possible. There have been reports of large plumes of smoke rising from the steelworks.

A driver along the road near the fire told BBC News that she “couldn't see the flames because the sky was so blackâ€.

A spokesperson for Tata Steel said it was too early to say whether the fire would affect its operations, and that the company would be assessing the situation over the coming days.

Newsflash: UK construction output has fallen at the fastest pace for six years, as builders were hit by higher energy, fuel and transportation costs.

Data firm S&P Global has reported that output in all three subsectors within construction – housebuilding, commercial work and civil engineering – posted sharp declines during May.

Residential activity was the weakest-performing segment, with builders blaming unfavourable market conditions and headwinds from elevated borrowing costs since the Iran war started.

S&P Global's poll of purchasing managers at construction firms also found there was a “sharp and accelerated†fall in new orders last month, prompting builders to cut staffing levels.

This pulled its construction PMI down to 38.2 in May, showing the fastest rate of contraction since May 2020 (50 points = stagnation).

The jump in fuel and raw material prices since the Middle East conflict began drove inflation in the construction sector up at the fastest rate since June 2022.

Tim Moore, economics director at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said:

“UK construction companies reported a steep downturn in business activity during May, with the speed of contraction accelerating to its fastest for six years. House building remained especially subdued, and there were fresh challenges in the construction sector from a considerable softening of commercial activity since April.

“Anecdotal evidence suggested that economic uncertainty and rising inflation in the wake of the Middle East conflict had triggered the steepest drop in new work since the beginning of the pandemic. Elevated borrowing costs were also reported to have impacted market conditions.

“Fuel surcharges and rapid increases in prices for energy-intensive raw materials continued to be felt across the construction supply chain. Overall purchasing costs rose to the greatest extent since June 2022, while international shipping delays meant that suppliers' delivery times lengthened for the third month running

Another of Elon Musk's businesses, Tesla, grew its car sales in the UK by 45% last month.

A total of 2,934 new Teslas were sold in May, up from 2,016 in May 2025, new data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show.

Overall, the UK new car market grew by 7.1% in May, with battery electric vehicles now making up 27.3% of sales.

China's carmakers grew their sales strongly – BYD were up 70% year-on-year to 5,157 cars, while Chery sold 3,166 vehicles, infinitely more than in May 2025 (when it didn't sell any cars in the UK).

Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, says:

Britain's car buyers are responding to a market offering more choice than ever, from both new and familiar brands, resulting in a robust May. The EV transition is progressing, but consumer uptake still lags behind even today's targets, let alone the ambition set out in the latest Carbon Budget.

While industry shares the long-term ambition, the pathway to Net Zero must be credible. It cannot come at the cost of lost competitiveness and deindustrialisation. A review of the transition is now urgent to ensure ambition matches market realities and we have a sustainable path to road transport decarbonisation.

Alan Miller, CIO at wealth manager SCM Direct, is concerned that passive investment funds will be forced buyers of SpaceX's shares due to the changes to index inclusion rules (see previous post).

Miller says these changes threaten investor safety, explaining:

“Passive investing has been sold as the safe, low-cost default. But the rules are being rewritten so that the biggest, most hyped companies in history can be forced into your index fund on day one, at almost any price.

That isn't investing, it's being a captive buyer. We size our holdings by what a business actually earns, not by how excited the crowd is, which is precisely why our clients won't be dragged in.â€

Somewhat controversially, recent tweaks to stock market listing rules will make it easier for SpaceX to get its IPO off the ground.

The Nasdaq index, for example, changed its index inclusion rules, which means SpaceX's shares would be listed faster – which would force index trackers to buy the stock sooner than previously.

Forbes has the details:

Under the old rules, a new stock had to season for at least 3 months before it could join the index, and it had to have at least 10% of its shares traded publicly. Both of those requirements are now gone.

Now, a stock is eligible for fast-track inclusion after just 15 trading days, with almost no float if its market capitalization places it among the top 40 holdings of the Nasdaq-100.

London's stock market is a little higher at the start of trading.

The FTSE 100 share index is up by 13 points, or 0.13%, to 13,346 points. Housebuilders and banks are among the risers, as a fall in the oil price eases inflation worries.

Brent crude is down 1%, below $97 a barrel, after the US announced that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to implement a ceasefire to end hostilities.

SpaceX's monster IPO is just part of a wave of very large stock market listings planned for this summer, with AI rivals ChatGPT and Anthropic also aiming to float.

That could create ructions in the markets, as investors try to raise funds so they can buy shares in these three companies….

JP Morgan's CEO is to pitch SpaceX to his bank's ultra-rich clients.

Jamie Dimon plans to discuss the upcoming SpaceX initial public offering with thousands of the bank's high net worth clients this week, according to Bloomberg, qho report:

Dimon will host a ‘live interactive discussion' Thursday from JPMorgan's headquarters, according to invitations seen by Bloomberg.

He will be joined by Mary Callahan Erdoes, the CEO of the bank's asset and wealth management division, and a pair of SpaceX executives: president Gwynne Shotwell and CFO Bret Johnsen.

SpaceX's $1.75tn is ‘stratospherically high', warns Michael Hewson, senior market analyst at iForex, which might put some investors off taking part in the IPO:

In what looks set to be one of the most hotly anticipated IPOs in years, SpaceX is set to blast off on 12th June as it looks to raise up to $75bn from investors at $135 a share, which would value the company at an eye-popping $1.75tn.

This eye-watering valuation looks set to see the business included in the Nasdaq with many questioning how anyone can justify such a stratospheric valuation at this level of fixed price, even before the book-building process has started.

In doing this SpaceX runs the risk that some investors might baulk at the price tag, raising the risk it could come up short, as the investor road show gets underway.

On any normal metric the numbers defy belief given that last year SpaceX lost $4.9bn on the back of total revenues of $18.7bn.

While the increase in revenues of 33% from 2024 was welcome, most of the improvement came from its Starlink service, which contributed about $11.4bn.

On the basis of last year's revenues of $18.7bn, a $1.7tn valuation would equate to 92 times sales, which for a business that can currently be described as either an aerospace or telecoms business is stratospherically high.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.

“Rockets are hard,†as Elon Musk pointed out last week after rival Jeff Bezos's New Glenn rocket exploded during a test in Florida last week. But launching the world's largest stock market flotation is also a challenge.

Musk's SpaceX has announced that it plans to IPO at a valuation of $1.78tn, which would be the largest stock market float ever.

Plans filed last night show that SpaceX plans to raise $75bn, although that could rise to $86bn if the banks underwriting the deal take up an option to sell additional shares

If successful, this will rank as the largest IPO in history, overtaking Saudi Aramco's float in 2019, and put Musk on track to be a trillionaire.

But while SpaceX's rocket operations, and its ambitions for orbital artificial intelligence data centres, are ambitious, so is its IPO valuation.

The company posted a net loss of $4.94bn in 2025, Reuters points out, with revenue rising 33% to $18.67bn.

That means it is targeting an astrononic valuation of over 90 times its annual revenues (investors would rather value companies as a multiple of its profits….).

Floating on the stock market will give SpaceX access to a fresh source of capital. But it will also allow insiders to cash out some of their profits on SpaceX, by selling their shares to ordinary investors. Index fund trackers and pensions funds will provide some of this ‘exit liquidity', meaning we could soon all find we have a stake in Musk's ambitions.

Some analysts have questioned SpaceX's mega valuation.

Financial data firm Morningstar warned earlier this week that the company is “significantly overvalued.â€

Assessing the future value of the space economy is tricky; Morningstar's discounted cash flow valuation of SpaceX (based on its future cash flows) is $780bn, and they say:

We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO.â€

The agenda

• 8.30am BST: Eurozone construction PMI for May

• 9am BST: UK new car sales data for May

• 9.30am BST: UK construction PMI for May

• 10.30am BST: US ‘Challenger' jobs cuts data for May

• 1.30pm BST: US weekly ‘initial claims' jobless data