Lunar startup ispace's shares untraded in Tokyo debut amid glut of buy orders

TOKYO :Shares of lunar transportation start-up ispace Inc went untraded in their market debut in Tokyo early on Wednesday, as bids overwhelmed offers.

The company, which has a probe already en route for the moon, raised 6.7 billion yen ($50 million) in an initial public offering (IPO) last month. Shares of ispace were last bid at 319 yen on the Tokyo exchange's growth market, 26 per cent above their IPO price of 254 yen. The stock has an upper price limit of 585 yen, according to the exchange. The start-up, which has a contract with NASA to ferry payloads to the moon from 2025 and is targeting building a permanently staffed lunar colony by 2040, aims to be the first commercial company to land a probe on the moon.

In December its Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander was launched aboard a SpaceX rocket that took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying two robotic rovers.

ispace said in a statement on Wednesday it expects the lander to touch down on the moon's surface on April 26 at the earliest.

In February ispace said its lunar lander reached its farthest distance from Earth and, despite minor technical hitches during the moonshot, was on track for a lunar landing attempt later this month.

If successful, it will mark the first ever lunar landing by a private company. Only the governments of the United States, Russia and China have nailed such a feat, with landing attempts by India and a private Israeli company ending in failure in recent years.

The company had intended to raise around 6 billion yen in the offering, but later boosted the size of the share sale. The IPO price of 254 yen was the top of its indicated range of 234-254 yen.

It sold 26.5 million shares in the increased IPO. There was a greenshoe option of up to 1.2 million shares.