By Paul R. La Monica

Initial public offerings seem to be flying to the moon lately. And one company that's aiming to go public later this week has literally done just that. Firefly Aerospace, whose lunar lander Blue Ghost successfully touched down on the surface of the moon in March, is set to make its debut this week. Demand should be strong.

Firefly said last week that it planned to sell 16.2 million shares in a price range of $35 to $39 a share. Firefly disclosed in a new regulatory filing Monday that it was raising the range to $41 to $43 a share. Based on the upper end of that range and with 143 million shares outstanding after the deal, Firefly would be valued at more than $6.1 billion. The company will be raising nearly $700 million from the stock sale at a price of $43. The stock will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol FLY.

Firefly is not yet profitable. And revenue is minimal. The company reported sales of just $55.9 million in the first quarter of this year and a backlog of $1.1 billion. But Firefly, part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, appears to have a leg up on its smaller publicly traded competitor, Intuitive Machines, whose Athena lander tipped over following a mission to the moon in March.

Intuitive Machines, which went public in 2023 following a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC), has been an incredibly volatile stock. Shares are down nearly 40% this year but have soared more than 220% in the past 12 months. The company is now worth about $2 billion.

Still, investors are clearly fascinated with space-related companies. Karman Holdings, which makes mission-critical systems for missile, defense, and space programs, debuted in February at a price of $22 a share and has more than doubled. That makes it the third-best performing IPO of 2025, trailing only stablecoin company Circle Internet Group and cloud computing/artificial intelligence firm CoreWeave.

Another space exploration company, Voyager Technologies, went public in June. Shares of Voyager, which has a contract with NASA to design Starlab, the commercial space station set to replace the International Space Station after it is decommissioned in 2030, soared 82% on their first day of trading but have since pulled back sharply.

So, investing in space stocks is not for the faint of heart. There seem to be about as many risks as trying to land a spacecraft on the moon.

Write to Paul R. La Monica at paul.lamonica@barrons.com

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August 05, 2025 11:27 ET (15:27 GMT)

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