Firefly Aerospace to Make Public Debut (Full Interview)

Firefly Aerospace Inc. shares are indicated to open at $62 each, as much as 38% above the initial public offering price of $45 per share. CEO Jason Kim spoke on Bloomberg about the IPO's timing and the future of the space market.

Shares in Firefly Aerospace will start trading on Thursday in New York, marking the next evolution for a company that survived bankruptcy and turmoil to develop its own fleet of rockets and successfully land a private spacecraft on the moon.

With the company’s upsized initial public offering raising $868 million, the Texas-based space firm becomes the most recent test case of whether a launch company can maintain a sustainable business where other space companies have failed.

The public offering also heralds a windfall for shareholders, including veteran SpaceX engineer Tom Markusic, AE Industrial Partners and the Astera Institute, a nonprofit.

“Firefly has all these successes that has led us to a good position to go public,” Chief Executive Officer Jason Kim said in an interview.

The Cedar Park, Texas-based firm increased the number of shares offered to 19.3 million and priced them at $45 each, above a marketed range, after drawing orders for at least 10 times the amount of stock the company had planned to sell. The pricing gives the company a fully diluted value of more than $7 billion.

The IPO comes during the most consequential year yet for Firefly Aerospace. In March, the company made history by successfully landing a robotic spacecraft, called Blue Ghost, on the surface of the moon in partnership with NASA.

So far, Blue Ghost is the only privately developed spacecraft to land upright — and intact — on the lunar surface.

Started primarily as a launch company, Firefly also operates its own small rocket launcher called Alpha, though the vehicle has a mixed track record. Alpha has launched six times since its debut in 2021, and has only had two fully successful missions so far, with the others either failing outright or delivering satellites to improper orbits.

Firefly holds multiple contracts with NASA to land more Blue Ghost missions on the moon and was recently awarded $177 million by the agency for its fourth lunar landing. The company is also developing a larger, more powerful rocket called Eclipse in partnership with Northrop Grumman Corp., which will serve as a more direct competitor to SpaceX’s industry-leading Falcon 9 rocket. And the company is developing a satellite line called Elytra that can service and boost other satellites in space.

Kim says the funds raised from the IPO will go toward ramping up the cadence of its Alpha rockets, as well as helping to fast-track the rest of the company’s product lines.

“There’s a lot more demand than supply in the market,” Kim said. “So we want to be able to address more and more of that demand.”

The company’s more traditional path to a public offering comes after a number of space industry players taken public during the blank-check deal frenzy of the Covid era went bust or faced grave struggles.

However, other launch firms have found success as public companies, notably Rocket Lab Corp., which has maintained a steady business since its SPAC merger in 2021.

Rocket Lab and Firefly both have diversified their businesses beyond launches to include satellite manufacturing and developing larger rockets.

Rocky Past

Founded in 2014 by Firefly’s current chief technology officer, Tom Markusic, the company, originally called Firefly Space Systems, aimed to compete in the small launch market by developing its Alpha rocket. But after one of Firefly’s most prominent European investors backed out, the company burned through cash and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017.

That same year, Ukrainian investor Max Polyakov acquired Firefly’s assets and resurrected the company, with his firm Noosphere Ventures becoming a majority stakeholder. Since 2021, Firefly has steadily raised funding, most recently taking in $175 million in a 2024 Series Db round.

In 2022, Polyakov sold his stake in Firefly after facing pressure by the US government over national security concerns.

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