Intuitive Machines rockets higher after landing spacecraft on moon

FILE PHOTO: The Nova-C lunar lander designed by aerospace company Intuitive Machines is displayed at the company’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, U.S., October 3, 2023. REUTERS/Evan Garcia/File Photo

By Akash Sriram and Harshita Mary Varghese

(Reuters) -Shares of Intuitive Machines soared 38% on Friday as the company became the first private firm to land a spacecraft on the moon, in what could be a watershed moment for the space industry.

The landing, the first U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century, put the company on track to waltz past $1 billion in market value.

It also pushed up shares of other space companies, with Rocket Lab, Virgin Galactic and Astra Space gaining between 1.2% and 3%.

“This is a major achievement that should help boost awareness and credibility for the entire industry and companies like Rocket Lab, among others, will benefit from this,” said Andres Sheppard, senior analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, which was an investment banking partner for the firm.

Texas-based Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander, dubbed “Odysseus”, touched down at the Malapert A crater, about 300 km from the moon’s south pole on Thursday.

The lander was sent on its way to the moon last Thursday using a Falcon 9 rocket launched by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The landing represented the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since Apollo 17 in 1972, when NASA’s last crewed moon mission landed there with astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.

“Congrats on landing on the moon!” Musk said in a post on X, soon after Intuitive said Odysseus was upright and starting to send data. The company is awaiting first images from the lunar surface.

The landing could open the doors to investments and government contracts, helping companies ride out what has been a tough period of funding for the space industry due to an uncertain economy.

“The technical acumen demonstrated today puts Intuitive Machines into a very exclusive club of space technology companies and government services contractors that can be relied upon to carry out the most demanding missions for NASA, DoD and other agencies,” Canaccord Genuity analyst Austin Moeller said.

The brokerage more than doubled its price target for the stock to $14, citing the probability of the company winning high-revenue growth contracts, including from the government.

Shares of Intuitive Machines, which fell for two straight sessions before the landing, were among the top trending stocks on retail trader platform Stocktwits on Friday.

Over 3 million shares exchanged hands in early trading and more shares traded in February alone – exceeding 200 million – than in the previous two years combined, according to LSEG data.

Still, with just 17.9 million shares as free float, or less than 20% of the company’s outstanding shares, the stock is susceptible to outsized moves.

Intuitive Machines was co-founded in 2013 by Stephen Altemus, Kam Ghaffarian and Tim Crain.

Ghaffarian, who is also the co-founder of Axiom Space, is on the board of other space organizations, while Crain and Altemus are NASA veterans.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram and Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)