Cashing in on SpaceX: 'Every chance I get, I'll sell a little more'

Andre Lavoie joined SpaceX in 2009 as an engineer, designing the pressure tanks that help power its rocket. He was paid partly in stock - a common trade-off at start-ups as a hiring incentive.

Some 17 years on, those 200,000 shares he was given are worth about $23m (£17m) - and the 63-year-old says he's ready to start cashing them as soon as he can.

"Every chance I get going forward, I'll sell a little bit more," he tells the BBC.

"The shares have been going up so radically it keeps messing up my life plans - you really can't know the future, so it's better to sell early and in intervals."

Lavoie is far from being the only one who has seen the value of his stake in SpaceX rocket over the years.

The company's founder, Elon Musk, said on Fox News that SpaceX's listing on the stock market in June had likely made "several thousand" employees millionaires - including staff "who were working on the production line".

According to reports, there are estimated to be 4,400 new millionaires created by the listing.

Unlike most newly-listed firms, SpaceX shares are set to be released in stages: the first 20% on 6 August, with more due in batches through the rest of the year.

Whether or not shareholders decide to sell their stake at the first opportunity is a matter for individuals. Unlike Lavoie, some may choose to hold onto their shares altogether in the hope of bigger gains later.

SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq in June, in the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history, valuing the rocket and satellite firm at more than $2 trillion.

It briefly made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, before the stock cooled and his fortune slipped back below the milestone within weeks.

In its first results as a public company this week, the firm's quarterly revenue was shown to have nearly doubled to $7.8bn (£5.8bn) from a year earlier, while its spending ballooned to $18.3bn - more than six times what it was a year ago.

Overall, SpaceX made a net loss of $143m in the three months to June, and a loss of $2bn during the first six months of the year.

Musk pushed back against sceptics on an earnings call: "I think people are really underestimating Starlink". He predicted the satellite internet service - the one part of the company that is currently making a profit - could one day deliver a majority of the world's internet.