우주를 향한 도박의 결실, 스페이스X IPO가 써 내려갈 2,700조 원의 신화 > K-wave Trends

The number of millionaires that will be created through SpaceX's recent listing is truly overwhelming. According to an analysis by investment platform Hill.com, more than 4,400 current and former employees are expected to join the ranks of millionaires, and about 400 of them are expected to become ultra-wealthy with assets exceeding $100 million. This is significantly different from the structure in a typical listed company where only the founder or a very small number of early investors monopolize the wealth. From hourly workers who did not hesitate to work hard at rocket launch sites to engineers who stayed up all night in poor offices without windows to solve technical problems, their dedication was finally rewarded in the form of stocks. This large-scale wealth creation can be evaluated as the result of SpaceX's corporate culture that has equated employees with the company's growth through equity sharing rather than cash compensation.

The biggest beneficiary of this listing is by far CEO Elon Musk. Market experts analyze that Musk, who owns a 42% stake in Space Its corporate value of $1.77 trillion is five times the size of General Electric (GE), suggesting that the space industry has now moved beyond the simple research and development stage and entered a massive profit-generating model. Early investors, including Silicon Valley venture capital and private equity funds, led by Musk, are also expected to reap huge profits worth billions of dollars. However, behind these spectacular figures lies the fierce perseverance and adventurous spirit of employees who believed in the company's survival and received their bonuses in stocks instead of cash, in the past when SpaceX's rockets exploded frequently and the future was uncertain.

Not all employees get a victory toast. There are cases where Musk disposed of his shares at a low price because he judged that the company would not be listed, based on Musk's negative attitude toward listing in the past during a period of upheaval in corporate culture. In particular, the anecdote of early employees exchanging stocks for gift certificates to a family restaurant is being talked about as the most bitter lesson of ‘expensive choice’ in Silicon Valley. This clearly shows the uncertainty of the asset called stocks and how cruel the resulting compensation system is. The situation in which a piece of paper that seemed worthless at the time was transformed into a value worth tens of billions of won decades later reminds us once again that owning stocks of a new company goes beyond simple financial investment and presupposes a strong trust in the company's vision.

Technical confusion and investor protection issues that occurred during the listing process are also important aspects of this IPO. Korea's Mirae Asset Securities initially attempted to support immediate trading on the day of listing, but confirmed that trading immediately after listing was impossible due to the time difference between the local U.S. public offering process and the domestic deposit and settlement system. Accordingly, in order to prevent investors from being exposed to the risk of price fluctuations, we have taken measures to grant the right to withdraw subscriptions. This is an example of how systematic uncertainty affects investors when investing in very large public stocks that attract enormous attention. As trading becomes impossible on the first day of listing, investors are expected to be able to actually trade only after the 16th, and caution is required about market volatility that may occur during this period.