SpaceX has tapped Goldman Sachs for the left lead position in its initial public offering prospectus, CNBC reported.
Rounding out the leading banking group are Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, and Bloomberg reports that Morgan Stanley also holds a leading position. A source told the Wall Street Journal that those three banks appear in their current order simply because of the alphabet.
According to Bloomberg, the deal is structured to generate up to $75 billion while seeking a valuation of more than $2 trillion, a figure that would eclipse the $29.4 billion that Saudi Aramco raised when it went public in 2019.
A public filing of a prospectus could come as soon as Wednesday, CNBC reported, after the company filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission under a confidential process last month. When contacted by Bloomberg, none of the five major banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup or JPMorgan) offered a statement, and SpaceX did not respond to media questions.
When a bank appears on the cover of an IPO it indicates the depth of its involvement and can determine how fee income is divided, Bloomberg noted, adding that the SpaceX deal is expected to generate payments to underwriting banks that would far exceed what a typical public offering generates. A broader syndicate of regional banks has also been formed, Bloomberg reported: Barclays is responsible for share orders in the United Kingdom, Deutsche Bank and UBS cover continental Europe, Royal Bank of Canada oversees Canadian demand, Mizuho Financial Group handles Asia, and Macquarie Group is assigned to Australia.
It’s not the first time Goldman has led a Musk company into the market: The bank also anchored Tesla’s Nasdaq debut in 2010, which featured Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank in supporting roles, CNBC noted. To contextualize the scale of SpaceX’s expected listing, CNBC noted that no technology company has ever surpassed a $100 billion valuation on its first day of trading in the United States, a threshold that not even Facebook and Alibaba surpassed.