SpaceX IPO: Is This the 10X Stock You've Been Waiting For?

If you're like me, you've been tracking the upcoming SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) very closely. There are already some ways you can invest in SpaceX shares today. But it's also reasonable to simply wait for the IPO to make shares widely available to the public.

Betting markets currently predict that the SpaceX IPO will be announced sometime in June. So we could be just a month away from what should be a record-breaking public debut. While predictions vary, most analysts suspect the company will target a valuation between $1.5 trillion and $1.75 trillion. Recently, there have even been rumors that the company could be eyeing a $2 trillion valuation.

I love SpaceX as a business. Led by founder Elon Musk, the company has revolutionized the rocket industry by making it dramatically cheaper to bring a payload into space. This feat now makes scores of other business opportunities available, such as scaling a low-Earth-orbit satellite internet business or putting artificial intelligence (AI) data centers into space.

But how much upside is there really for a business with an initial valuation as high as $2 trillion? If SpaceX stock were to rise 10x from that valuation, the company would be worth an astounding $20 trillion. Is that really possible? Let's find out.

Here's what experts think of SpaceX's $2 trillion valuation

Expectations are soaring for SpaceX's impending IPO. "The hype around SpaceX is out of this world," concludes a recent report from Investment News, a financial publication for independent financial advisors. In that report, Investment News asks several analysts whether a $2 trillion valuation would be reasonable for SpaceX. The responses were mostly bullish, but carried plenty of cautionary words.

"Clients are absolutely going bonkers over this," stressed one money manager. "You look at Starlink, the revenue, that thing prints money. Just the amount of satellites they have -- controlling [around] 70% of all global satellites, and their goal is to add more." Perhaps surprisingly, this money manager wasn't as concerned about the scale of SpaceX's growth trajectory as he was about potential regulation reining in the company's ambitions. He continued:

Their biggest risk is a monopoly. Elon Musk, he's not a fool. He's going to provide internet to the world, potentially phone service, data on everybody to know your location, potentially satellite images using AI to analyze data. Then he's gonna have data centers. This could be the next Lex Luthor.

Not every expert interviewed was as optimistic. "I do think the public itself is very hungry to have exposure to these companies," began one analyst. "But these companies have, no pun intended, astronomical valuations associated with them relative to the business that they're producing today. So I think there's a lot of risk in the way that these companies are going to come to market."

Image source: Getty Images.

Indeed, a recent analysis published by PitchBook pegged SpaceX's proper valuation to be somewhere between $1.1 trillion and $1.7 trillion -- hundreds of billions of dollars short of SpaceX's supposed $2 trillion target.

"The challenge for investors ahead of the listing is that SpaceX has never filed a public financial statement, yet it is preparing to go public in what would be the largest offering in history," warns PitchBook's report. "So investors are tasked with valuing a company with bold business projections but with limited information about its books."

This is critical to understand when considering an investment in SpaceX today: The company has yet to disclose its full financials to the public. So while we can look at other Musk businesses like Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and understand that much of its $1.2 trillion valuation is tied up in future growth potential, we can't make the same value judgments for SpaceX. At least not yet.

SpaceX is expected to publicly file an investment prospectus sometime in May. Only then can we start to determine whether the financials suggest the space stock's targeted valuation is reasonable. And only then can we ever begin to gauge whether a $20 trillion valuation -- which would make the stock a 10x investment -- will ever be possible. I'm very excited to see the full financials. But for now, I'm holding off on making any investment decision.

Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.