Tens of thousands of retail Australian investors are about to find out how many shares they’ve been allocated in the world’s biggest-ever initial public offering.
SpaceX will go public on the US Nasdaq exchange on Friday, with its listing set to raise up to $US75 billion ($A106 billion) to advance Elon Musk’s grandiose vision of making human life multi-planetary.
In a rare and perhaps unprecedented move, retail investors in Australia, Europe, the UK and several other countries outside the US were granted access to the red-hot initial public offering (IPO).
CommSec, the lead Australian broker for the transaction, was warning of “extremely high call volumes” earlier this week and advising customers to submit their applications online.
“We’ve seen very good interest across a broad, broad range of Australian investors,” a source familiar with the transaction but not authorised to speak publicly told AAP.
Superannuation funds and institutional investors applied for an allocation, along with tens of thousands of Australian retail investors, the source said.
“I think that was really healthy, healthy levels of interest, certainly by the number of applications, and I think very healthy levels of demand,” he said.
He said it was probably the most in-demand IPO in Australia since Medibank Private’s 2014 float, which raised $5.7 billion for the federal government.
The allocations each would-be investor will receive will be communicated to them on Friday afternoon Australian time.
Reuters reported on Wednesday the IPO was almost four times oversubscribed, drawing more than $US250 billion ($A357 billion) in investor demand.
That would likely mean allocations will be scaled back, or some investors might be denied an allocation.
A Commonwealth Bank representative would not comment on a report in the Australian Financial Review that 30,000 of its retail customers had bid for the stock via its CommSec platform.
SpaceX shares were being offered at $US135 ($A191) apiece, giving the space exploration company a mammoth $US1.75 trillion ($A2.5 trillion) valuation – among the 10 most valuable companies in the world.
The shares will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SPCX on Friday US time.
Australian Associated Press is the beating heart of Australian news. AAP is Australia’s only independent national newswire and has been delivering accurate, reliable and fast news content to the media industry, government and corporate sector for 85 years. We keep Australia informed.
