Wall Street Waits for the SpaceX IPO, These 2 Under-the-Radar IPOs Could Already Be Making You Money

SpaceX is highlighted as a potential $1.75 trillion IPO valued at 95x its 2025 revenue of $18.5 billion, raising concerns that it may be overvalued at debut. The article instead favors recently public Heartflow and Neptune Insurance, citing Heartflow's 40% 2025 revenue growth, 77% adjusted gross margin, and 2026 revenue growth of 24%-26%, alongside Neptune's 34% revenue growth, 32% adjusted EBITDA growth, and 2026 revenue guidance of +22%. Overall tone is constructive on the two smaller IPOs but cautious on SpaceX's valuation.

Analysis

The market is implicitly paying for a very different quality of growth across the three names: HTFL and NP are monetizing narrow, regulated problem sets with visible adoption curves, while SpaceX would be priced like a near-monopoly platform before public investors have any proof that its capital intensity converts into durable free cash flow. That creates a classic post-IPO dispersion setup: the highest headline-growth asset is also the most vulnerable to multiple compression once marginal buyers are forced to anchor to revenue rather than narrative.

Second-order, the public market debut of a hyperscale private asset at an extreme multiple could actually help the smaller public comps if investors rotate toward “realized AI” instead of “optional AI.” HTFL benefits from this framing because its AI is embedded in reimbursement-backed workflow economics, not speculative model demand; NP benefits even more because catastrophe modeling and underwriting automation can be benchmarked directly against loss ratio improvement. The common thread is that both businesses can justify premium multiples through operating leverage rather than TAM rhetoric.

The key risk is timing: the cheapest entry on both HTFL and NP is likely not today but after the first post-IPO rotation in high-beta growth names, when the market re-rates what counts as defensible software versus venture-style revenue. Over the next 3-9 months, the most important catalyst is not headline revenue growth but margin trajectory and coverage expansion; if either company misses on gross margin or cadence of institutional adoption, the stocks could de-rate 20-30% quickly. Conversely, if SpaceX trades badly on listing, it may act as a liquidity sink for speculative capital rather than a sector-wide rising tide.

The contrarian view is that investors may be underestimating how much protection NP has from cyclical slowdown because insurance demand is structurally sticky and catastrophe exposure is largely warehoused off-balance-sheet. Meanwhile, HTFL’s risk is that hospital workflow adoption can slow abruptly if reimbursement rules tighten or if health systems delay non-urgent software spend. In both cases, the better trade is not absolute long beta, but selective exposure to the names with clearer path-to-cash-flow and less dependence on sentiment staying hot.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long HTFL on pullbacks over the next 2-6 weeks; target a 15-20% upside if institutional adoption and margin expansion continue, with a 10-12% stop if growth decelerates below guidance cadence.
• Long NP as a 6-12 month compounding trade; seek 20-25% upside on continued underwriting automation and margin expansion, while capping downside via a 12-15% stop if loss-cost inflation appears.
• Pair trade: long HTFL / short a basket of speculative pre-profit AI infrastructure names for 3-9 months; thesis is that reimbursement-backed AI should outperform narrative AI by 10-15 percentage points if the market de-risks.
• Avoid initiating new long exposure in SpaceX-style hype trades at IPO pricing; wait for a post-listing reset or trade via put spreads on comparable high-multiple growth proxies if the broader IPO tape overheats.
• If forced to express the theme tactically, buy HTFL and NP on any 5-8% post-IPO/earnings weakness rather than chasing strength; the asymmetry improves materially once initial flow-driven volatility subsides.