By Manya Saini
(Reuters) -Firefly Aerospace shares fell 9% in premarket trading on Friday, in what was perceived as a normal market swing, but the space tech firm's robust debut highlighted renewed investor appetite for high-growth listings.
After nearly three years of a dryspell in new listings, a resurgence in high-risk sectors such as space, crypto and fintech — fueled by blockbuster entries such as Firefly and Circle — is expected to prompt startups that held back during market turbulence to launch
public offerings.
Firefly's shares opened for trading on the Nasdaq at $70 apiece, compared with the initial public offering price of $45. It closed the debut session roughly 34% higher.
"Large pops and drops show an elevated level of short-term money trading around IPOs, be it hedge funds or retail. This has been a feature of the market in recent months," said Samuel Kerr, head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket.
Post-IPO stocks often see sharp swings in the days after listing, driven by factors such as limited share float, profit-taking by early investors and shifts in broader market sentiment.
"The fact the stock is still well above the IPO price, despite a drop in premarket trading today and that should hopefully point to a solid cohort of institutional investors serving as a bed-rock for the stock in its early days of trading," Kerr said.
Firefly had priced its IPO above the marketed range and raised $868.3 million in the year's biggest U.S. space listing, marking a striking comeback for a company that filed for bankruptcy in 2017.
Private space firms have drawn fresh investor interest as they play a growing role in U.S. military and civil programs, aided by NASA's push to contract out lunar missions and the Pentagon's demand for responsive launch capabilities. The sector has also benefited from government spending and commercial satellite demand.
Still, it faces potential challenges from high development costs and long production timelines.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)
