The SpaceX IPO Is Coming. These Are the Stocks That Stand to Profit Most.

The key market implication is not that space is “hot,” but that the sector is moving from story stock to contracted industrials. A much larger SpaceX public valuation would likely compress the perceived discount rate on adjacent names, but the bigger second-order effect is a capital-allocation reset: suppliers, launch-adjacent software, and downstream data users can now tap cheaper equity capital, improving their ability to fund long-duration contracts and widen moat advantages. That tends to favor the most vertically integrated or highest-retention business models first, while weaker balance sheets get drowned out by the richer public comps.

RKLB looks like the cleaner beneficiary because it has exposure to both launch and spacecraft systems, which gives it more operating leverage to a broader re-rating than a pure-play services model. The risk is that sentiment is outrunning execution quality: once the IPO catalyst fades, investors will re-underwrite these names on backlog conversion, margin durability, and launch cadence rather than TAM narratives. Any slip in program milestones or evidence that backlog is long-dated but low-quality would hit RKLB harder because expectations are already elevated.

PL’s setup is more nuanced. The backlog growth is supportive, but Earth-observation demand is more vulnerable to procurement timing and budget churn than launch infrastructure, so the multiple can be more sensitive to proof of monetization. The near-term risk is that enthusiasm around the SpaceX IPO creates a broad basket trade that lifts both names together, but over 6-12 months the market may separate them based on cash burn trajectory and gross margin expansion.

The consensus is underappreciating how much of this move may be a liquidity/attention trade rather than a pure fundamentals trade. That creates opportunity in relative value: if the sector rerates too aggressively into the IPO, the highest beta name can become vulnerable to a sharp post-event mean reversion, while the company with better recurring revenue characteristics may hold gains better. The clearest regime signal will be whether both names continue to outperform after the IPO filing is digested; if not, this is likely a temporary sentiment spike, not a durable sector inflection.