A SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon at 2 a.m. Wednesday, leaving a massive crater and another piece of “space junk” on its surface. But that will be only the second-biggest dump of SpaceX’s week.
On Thursday, nearly a billion shares of SpaceX, held by early employees and pre-IPO investors, will finally break free from their lockups. The shares, totaling around $100 billion at current prices, are more of a supply shock than the entire IPO itself. And while analysts worry that it will cheapen the stock—or, as Morgan Stanley suggests, provide an opportunity “to gain exposure to a potential generational compounder”—SpaceX avoided the worst of this moment by quietly lining up its buyers before the lockup clock even started running.
