What happened
Shares of Stable Road Acquisition Corp (SRAC), the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that aims to bring space tow truck service Momentus public next year in a reverse merger IPO, popped 12% as of 11:15 a.m. EST. There doesn't seem to be any news happening to explain the pop, however.
No news relating directly to Stable Road or to Momentus, that is. No analysts have upgraded the SPAC stock, no higher price targets been announced, and there's not a peep out of the company's press department either.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
What there is, though, is news that another SPAC stock -- New Providence Acquisition Corp, which that is located in Texas -- is moving to bring an entirely different space stock public to join the SPAC-created Virgin Galactic and Momentus IPOs.
Five days ago, New Providence Acquisition announced that it will bring "space-based cellular broadband network" company AS&T Science LLC public in a reverse merger IPO on the Nasdaq in the first quarter of 2021.
Now what
NPA says the new IPO, tickered "ASTS," will come public with a $1.8 billion market capitalization and a $1.4 billion enterprise value, of which $462 million will be cash that AS&T can use to build its business. The company's aim will be to address a $1 trillion need to enable cellphones that are already in existence to communicate with each other via satellite.
Those are some big numbers, and they may be the reason that investors in other "space stocks" are getting excited about the emerging space economy. The more money that pours into this sector, so the thinking may go, the more money that will be allotted to space companies of all stripes.
For Stable Road Acquisition at least, and for today at least, that seems to be the case -- 12% more money, in fact.
