Jay Ritter

Jay Ritter is director of the IPO Initiative and professor emeritus at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. Widely known as “Mr. IPO,” he is a financial economist whose research and public commentary focus on initial public offerings, IPO underpricing, and public-market listings.

SpaceX’s Starship Advantage Faces an Extreme IPO Valuation Test

Jay Ritter, the University of Florida IPO scholar known as “Mr. IPO,” told Bloomberg Technology that SpaceX’s prospective listing would test whether a genuine launch-cost advantage can support one of the largest valuations ever brought to public markets. Ritter argued that Starship’s engineering difficulty could help protect SpaceX from rivals and strengthen Starlink’s economics, but said a valuation around $1.5 trillion would require very large future profits to justify a roughly 80-times-sales multiple.

Bloomberg TechnologyMay 26, 20265 min read