SpaceX Faces Its First Lockup as Insiders Line Up to Sell

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX), which went public in June at $135 a share, had its first share lockup expire today, an event that could roughly triple the company's public float. The stock is down 27.82% since the listing but many employees and early investors will have the opportunity to cash out their gains for the first time. SpaceX shares are up 1.20% in premarket.

"You are going to see a lot of exits," said Robert Hackel of brokerage R.F. Lafferty, Reuters reported. Some pre-IPO holders are looking to rotate into privately traded shares of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Anduril.

The pressure won't come all at once. The unlock is staggered, with billions of shares freeing through the year, ramping to about 5.5 billion by December, according to Bloomberg data. Elon Musk, who holds about 42%, is barred until a year after the IPO, and executive officers face longer lockups that mostly run past fourth-quarter results.