Featured Image Credit: Spencer Platt / Staff via Getty
Elon Musk took a $350 billion loss this week that has affected his net worth, but not as much as you'd expect.
SpaceX went public earlier this month in the biggest IPO in history, valuing the company at nearly $1.77 trillion and pushing Elon Musk's net worth past $1 trillion, making him the world's first trillionaire.
Shares continued climbing after the debut, briefly pushing SpaceX's market value above $2.2 trillion at around $165 per share, overtaking Amazon, Meta, Broadcom, and Tesla. At its peak on 16 June, SpaceX hit $225.64 per share, and Musk's estimated net worth reached an all-time high of $1.45 trillion.
However, since then, the space company has taken a massive plunge.
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SpaceX shares have now fallen more than 31% from that peak, wiping out all the gains made since its record-setting first day of trading. The decline unfolded across three consecutive days, a 5% drop on Wednesday, a 3.6% fall on Thursday, and then a brutal 16.4% plunge on Monday, the worst single day the newly listed stock has seen.
Before the market opened on Tuesday, shares were set to extend those losses further. Monday's drop alone erased more than $152 billion from Musk's net worth in a single session, according to Forbes estimates. Across the broader three-day slide, the total hit to his fortune has exceeded $300 billion.
Don't start feeling sorry for the tech mogul just yet.
Despite the dramatic falls, Musk's net worth still sits at around $1.1 trillion according to Forbes, meaning he retains his trillionaire status.
His position in SpaceX includes a roughly 38% stake, consisting of 4.8 billion shares, and an additional 350 million stock options with an exercise price of $8.40 per share.
Investors became cautious after SpaceX announced it would issue bonds to raise at least $20 billion to refinance a short-term loan. According to Jose Torres, a senior economist at Interactive Brokers financial group (via NBC News), investors were 'wary of the substantial cash required to fund technological ambitions.'
Compounding the pressure, MSCI, one of the world's largest stock index providers, awarded SpaceX a CCC rating, its lowest possible score on a seven-tier sustainability scale. The decision declared the company was 'lagging on significant environmental, social and governance risks.'
Meanwhile, Morningstar, which has been consistently bearish on SpaceX, has remained firm in its view that the stock is significantly 'overvalued,' Forbes reported.
It lowered its fair value estimate slightly to $62 per share and criticised the company's recent acquisition as a 'sizable dilution' of shares.
