Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported that it has increased its stake in SpaceX more than 100 times in the past 10 years, investing US$900 million in 2015. Alphabet has also become the largest institutional stake holder since SpaceX went public.
Image source: SpaceX
According to news ReutersAs of the end of June, Alphabet owned 5.512 billion SpaceX shares, which was valued at about $94.2 billion at the time. By comparison, in 2015 the company disclosed a $900 million investment in SpaceX, allowing us to estimate the size of the growth in value of this early equity stake. Based on SpaceX’s share price as of Thursday, Alphabet’s stake is worth about $77.9 billion, but even so, it’s still worth about 86.5 times its initial investment.
The data on the stock emerged after SpaceX’s IPO in June, when the company went public at $135 a share. Alphabet is the largest disclosed institutional owner, ahead of Fidelity Investments with 302.6 million shares and Gigafund Management with 171.8 million shares, according to Reuters. Public reports show that the five largest shareholders, Alphabet, Fidelity Investments, Gigafund Management, Baillie Gifford and BlackRock, collectively own nearly three-quarters of SpaceX stock.
At the same time, the disclosed data does not allow us to completely determine the structure of SpaceX’s early investments and the future plans of the major shareholders. Form 13F is collected quarterly and issued within six weeks of the quarter’s end, so it reflects conditions as of June 30 and does not reflect subsequent purchases or sales. Steve Sosnick, market strategist at Interactive Brokers, noted that the filing also makes it impossible to tell which investors owned shares before the IPO and under what conditions they could sell.
Since entering the stock exchange, SpaceX’s share price has significantly changed the value of the packages revealed. As of Thursday, the stock closed at $141.29, 4.7% above its IPO price but 17.3% below its late-June level. And, since August 5, quotes have increased by 30%. On Friday, for the first time since the IPO, private investors sold more SpaceX shares than they bought, offloading about $4.5 million worth of shares, after mostly adding to their positions, according to Vanda Research.
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