By Echo Wang
NEW YORK, April 6 (Reuters) – SpaceX outlined details of its highly anticipated IPO at a meeting with its team of bankers Monday night, telling them it plans to earmark a large portion of shares for retail investors and will host 1,500 of them at an event in June following the IPO roadshow launch, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“Retail is going to be a critical part of this and a bigger part than any IPO in history,” Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said during the virtual meeting, the two people said, asking not to be identified because the discussion was private.
Johnsen said the large retail component is by design as “those are folks that have been incredibly supportive of us and of Elon (Musk) for a long time, and we want to make sure that we recognize that.”
Reuters reported last month that SpaceX is rewriting the IPO playbook with a large retail portion in the offering.
The meeting brought together the full syndicate for the first time as part of the process for what is expected to be the biggest initial public offering ever as the rocket maker seeks to raise $75 billion, valuing SpaceX at as much as $1.75 trillion, Reuters has previously reported.
(Reporting by Echo Wang in New YorkWriting by Dawn Kopecki; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
