3 Stocks to Buy Before SpaceX Goes Public

SpaceX’s expected $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion IPO valuation is lifting sentiment across the space sector, with Rocket Lab and Redwire up over 78% YTD and Linde up 20%. Rocket Lab posted Q1 revenue of $200 million, up 63%, with backlog above $2 billion and Neutron still on track; Redwire reported $97 million in Q1 revenue, up 58%, and a $498 million backlog, though it remains loss-making. Linde, with nearly $35 billion in trailing revenue, is seeing aerospace demand build as it expands liquid oxygen and nitrogen capacity near Starbase, Texas.

Analysis

The immediate winners are not just the listed pure-plays; the bigger second-order effect is a re-rating of the entire private-to-public space supply chain. A high-profile SpaceX listing would likely pull forward capital into adjacent bottlenecks: propulsion inputs, thermal systems, avionics, test infrastructure, and launch services. That matters because the market tends to overprice the obvious launch beneficiaries first, then eventually rotates toward the less crowded picks-and-shovels that compound with lower operating risk.

RKLB has the cleanest operating leverage if Neutron stays on schedule, but that also makes it the most fragile on timing. The stock is now being priced as a “prove-it-by-the-next-catalyst” story, so any slip in launch cadence or margin progression could trigger a sharp multiple reset even if demand remains strong. RDW has a different setup: its backlog and contract eligibility can keep the narrative intact for months, but profitability is still too distant for the market to anchor on fundamentals, so it is more vulnerable to sentiment air pockets than to a true demand slowdown.

LIN is the lower-beta way to own the space buildout, but the market may still be underestimating how slowly aerospace can move from immaterial to material. If launch frequency rises over several years, the gas and engineering spend becomes sticky and recurring, which should improve mix and valuation quality before it becomes visible in headline revenue. The contrarian risk is that the SpaceX IPO becomes a “sell-the-news” event for the listed proxies: if the deal pricing is extremely rich, investors may conclude the easiest money has already been made and rotate out of the speculative names into cash-generative industrials instead.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long RKLB via call spread into the next Neutron execution milestone; best risk/reward is 3-6 months out, because upside is tied to de-risking the medium-lift narrative while downside is a fast de-rating on any schedule miss.
• Prefer LIN over RDW for a long-only space basket; LIN offers slower but more durable exposure to launch infrastructure with materially lower execution risk, while RDW is still a funding-and-profitability story.
• Pair trade long LIN / short RDW for 3-9 months: this expresses the view that the market is overpaying for backlog optics and underpaying for recurring industrial demand with real cash generation.
• If owning RKLB outright, hedge with a small short-dated put spread around major launch/management events; the stock’s recent rerating leaves it vulnerable to “good-but-not-good-enough” reactions.
• Avoid chasing the SpaceX IPO proxy basket on announcement; wait 2-4 weeks after listing for the first rotation and implied-vol reset before adding risk.