How an IPO lock-up works, and what SpaceX's schedule says

If you have never held a share in a company that recently floated, "lock-up expiry" is one of those phrases that sounds ominous and gets very little explanation. It is showing up in every SpaceX story this week, and the schedule underneath it says something different from the headlines.

What a lock-up actually is

When a company lists on a stock exchange, only a slice of its shares is sold to the public. Everyone who owned shares before — founders, staff, early investors — keeps the rest. If all of them could sell on day one, the sudden supply would swamp the price, so they sign an agreement not to sell for a set period. That agreement is the lock-up, and it typically runs 90 to 180 days.

When it expires, those shares become sellable. Not sold — sellable. What matters is how many holders actually sell, and how the release is staged.

What SpaceX's schedule says

SpaceX floated on 12 June 2026 at $135 a share in the largest IPO on record. The price ran to an intraday peak of $225.64 in the week after listing, then went the other way. It closed Friday at $123.99 — about 45% below that peak, and below the price the IPO itself was struck at.

The lock-up doesn't lift in one go. Reading the schedule:

• Roughly 911.5 million shares — about $123 billion worth at current prices — unlock on the second full trading day after the company's first earnings report as a public company. Earnings-calendar sites pencil that report in for around 6 August, but they are estimating: SpaceX itself has not announced a date, so the unlock date moves with it.
• A further 455.8 million shares unlock only if the stock closes at least 30% above the IPO price — $175.50 — on five of the ten trading days heading into that report.
• After that, slices of about 7% unlock every two to three weeks from late August through late October.
• Another 28% becomes sellable after the third-quarter report.
• The standard lock-up finishes in early December.
• Elon Musk's own shares stay locked until next June, well after everything else.

The clause the headlines skip

Look again at that second tranche. Those 455.8 million shares need the price at $175.50. It is currently around $124. For that tranche to unlock, the stock would first have to climb more than 40% — and hold it for five of ten days.

So the single largest block of "extra" supply people are bracing for is, on today's price, not coming. The condition attached to it is the opposite of the fear it's cited as: it only triggers in a rally. That doesn't make the first tranche small, and it doesn't say anything about where the price goes.

What this means if you hold one of these

Nothing here is specific to SpaceX. If you buy into a recent IPO through a broker, the lock-up schedule is a public document — it sits in the prospectus, and the dates are knowable in advance rather than a surprise.

Whether any of this makes a recently-floated share attractive or not isn't something we'll tell you, and it depends entirely on your own horizon and risk tolerance. This is a summary of what the filings and reporting say, not investment advice.