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“This company is not aspirational — it’s operational.”
Firefly Aerospace (FLY) CEO Jason Kim said this to me on Yahoo Finance as his company was going through its rite of passage at the Nasdaq on Thursday. It felt so electric in the room, I asked Firefly’s employees to clap us in at the top of the interview (video above).
The stock opened at $70 a share and closed the session at $60.35 — up 34% from its IPO price of $45. The company’s market cap at the end of its first trading day stood at $8.48 billion.
Just last week, Firefly said it had planned to sell 16.2 million shares at a range of $35 to $39. A new regulatory filing on Monday came with a much higher range of $41 to $43. The company ended up raising $868 million from the IPO after selling 19.3 million shares at $45.
I think Kim’s comment perfectly captures why recent IPOs have been embraced enthusiastically by investors. The early-stage companies coming to market are more mature. The businesses are more complete. The leaders are more well-rounded. (Kim told me off camera he is very ready for his first earnings call.)
Firefly may still be early stage with no profits, but it’s not just hot air with no substance. It’s not a SPAC with a suspect leader — hearkening back to the flops from 2020. Kim is an Air Force veteran who spent considerable time working at Boeing’s satellite business.
His company is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Its lunar lander Blue Ghost successfully touched down on the surface of the moon in March. The company’s new Eclipse reusable rocket is expected to launch sometime in 2026, joining the already proven Alpha rocket in the portfolio.
In its prospectus, Firefly boasted $1.1 billion in backlog and lists partnerships with Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPAX.PVT), Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, NASA, Northrop Grumman (NOC), and Space Force.
Another recent IPO that is more operational than inspirational?
Figma (FIG) shares were priced at $33 for its market debut on July 31 and ended the day at $115.50. The company makes software that allows people to collaborate on slide decks and digital whiteboards, among other bells and whistles.
The company has more than 13 million monthly users. Its prospectus calls out that 1,000 clients are paying it north of $100,000 a year to use the product. Key customers include Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT).
