SpaceX earnings land Tuesday, August 4, marking the first since the company went public. The June listing already paid Morgan Stanley bankers about $100 million in fees.
That fee was the small part. IPOs led by SpaceX sent more than $74 billion to the bank’s wealth arm. Now SpaceX has to show the numbers behind it.
How the SpaceX IPO Built Morgan Stanley’s $10 Trillion Quarter
SpaceX sold 555,555,555 shares at $135 each on June 11. That raised $75 billion. It is the biggest IPO ever, more than double the $29.4 billion Saudi Aramco raised in 2019.
Ten banks ran the deal. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan led them. They all shared the fee pool.
Only one of those banks also ran SpaceX employee stock plans. That is what set Morgan Stanley apart.
Here is why it matters. When staff get rich on IPO day, the money lands wherever their stock plan already lives.
Morgan Stanley’s wealth arm took in $148.1 billion of new client money last quarter. A year ago the figure was $59.2 billion.
Just over half came from IPOs of stock plan clients, its earnings release shows. That is more than $74 billion in three months. Bloomberg reported a large share came from SpaceX.
The bank calls this unit Workplace. It bought Solium Capital in 2019 and E*Trade in 2020 to build it. Both deals pushed the firm deeper into steady fee income after the 2008 crisis.
Workplace now serves over half the S&P 500. It also covers about 70% of the 100 biggest private companies worth more than $1 billion. Total client assets passed $10 trillion.
Jed Finn runs Morgan Stanley’s wealth business. He sees the IPO as a start, not a payday.
“It would be a mistake to think about the IPO as a one-off event for asset capture. These are opportunities with multiple phases, with shares that get unlocked and new shares issued.”
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Here is the catch. Most of that money is not earning fees yet.
Morgan Stanley charges a fee once clients move cash into managed accounts. Only 26% of the new money went that way last quarter. A year earlier it was 72%.
Bloomberg puts the yearly revenue from SpaceX-linked money above $100 million. Getting it depends on shares that are still locked.
What SpaceX Earnings Have to Prove on August 4
Results come after the close on Tuesday. Analysts expect a loss of 26 cents a share. Nine of them filed forecasts, per Zacks.
This is the first real look inside the business. Investors want launch numbers, Starlink revenue, and the split between government and commercial work.
The stock has not waited. SPCX closed at $108.37 on July 31. That is 20% below the $135 offer price and 33% below its $161 first-day close. It hit a record low last week.
Contracts have not helped either. Shares still fell after SpaceX won $1.6 billion in Space Force launch work through 2027.
Then comes August 6. About 911.5 million locked shares become free to sell, two trading days after earnings.
At Friday’s price that is close to $99 billion of stock. It is more than the IPO itself raised. Meta’s 2012 unlock is the closest thing to a warning here.
Morgan Stanley has already been paid. It raised its dividend 15 cents to $1.15 and approved $20 billion in share buybacks. SpaceX investors are still waiting.
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