Intuitive Machines shares surge after moon landing

Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit insertion on February 21, 2024, in this handout image released February 22, 2024. Intuitive Machines/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. MANDATORY CREDIT

(Reuters) -Shares of Intuitive Machines shot up 38% in premarket trading after the space exploration company became the first private firm to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon.

The Texas-based company’s lunar lander, dubbed “Odysseus”, touched down at the Malapert A crater, about 300 kilometers from the moon’s south pole on Thursday, the first U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century.

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.

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

The stock was trading at $11.43 before the opening bell. With the jump in its share price, the company’s market capitalization is set to cross $1 billion. It went public a year ago.

With 17.9 million shares as free float, less than 20% of the company’s outstanding stock is available to trade, making it susceptible to outsized moves.

The company’s shares were among the top trending stocks on retail trader platform Stocktwits.

“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.

Analysts and investors have said companies with strong government contracts can ride out a tough economy given stable their source of income.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)