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A prominent valuation expert has said SpaceX is overvalued ahead of its planned Nasdaq listing.

Aswath Damodaran, a New York University professor widely known as the "dean of valuation," put SpaceX's worth at roughly $1.3 trillion (about 2,010 trillion won) — well below the figure the company itself has put forward.

Damodaran, a professor of corporate finance at NYU's Stern School of Business, offered that estimate Sunday on a Wall Street Journal podcast, according to Yonhap News Agency.

SpaceX is set to go public through an initial public offering on Friday. In filings submitted to regulators earlier, the company projected its own valuation at $1.77 trillion.

Damodaran said the biggest reason for the gap between his estimate and SpaceX's own figure is the AI segment.

SpaceX divides its business into three units: commercial rocket launches, the Starlink internet service and AI. The company values the total addressable market for its AI operations — run through xAI — at $26.5 trillion, which amounts to 93 percent of the company's overall total addressable market of $28.5 trillion.

SpaceX acquired xAI, the company behind the Grok chatbot, earlier this year.

"The estimates for the AI segment have gone beyond realistic levels and are heading into excessive territory," Damodaran said.

He said he built his own valuation model that assesses each of the three segments separately, estimating the market size and SpaceX's projected market share for each, then applying target operating profit margins to arrive at an overall company value.

"The segment where achieving profitability will be hardest is xAI," he said.

However, despite his relatively conservative valuation, Damodaran said he does not necessarily expect SpaceX's share price to underperform.

"SpaceX will be one of the most heavily traded stocks in the market. People will buy and sell shares based on sentiment and momentum," he said, adding, "Even if your valuation is right, you can still lose a lot of money on the investment."

SpaceX is a private American aerospace company founded by Elon Musk in 2002. It is widely credited with transforming the space industry through its reusable launch vehicles, space exploration programs and the Starlink satellite internet service.


rainbow@heraldcorp.com