Comment by kakapo5672
13 hours ago
Tesla is profitable, as a matter of public record. And SpaceX is, by all accounts, extremely profitable.
13 hours ago
Tesla is profitable, as a matter of public record. And SpaceX is, by all accounts, extremely profitable.
SpaceX is _not_ profitable by most reasonable measurements of accounting. If you discount rocket depreciation costs and R&D, then yeah its profitable from starlink revenue.
They haven't released a 10k yet so we don't know, but from what I understand SpaceX+X.ai is not GAAP profitable.
SpaceX was, but SpaceTwitter is not. xAI is hoovering all the money out of SpaceX.
SpaceX reuses its boosters 20+ times. Surely the depreciation is tiny when compared to the revenue of 60M+ per launch?
The entire space launch market is about $20B with multiple competitors in 2025. And by the most generous estimates it is going to be $80B by 2035. They can reuse the rockets as much as they like, the company isn’t worth $1.7T.
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They also have to replace 20%+ of their satellite network every year.
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What about the R&D costs of blowing up vehicle after vehicle?
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Depreciation isn't the only thing that matters. R&D, manufacturing, maintenance, fuel, launch, support staff, and I'm sure there are countless others.
I'm not saying they aren't profitable. I don't know, but it's definitely not a given.
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Between launches alone, Starlink and Starshield, SpaceX will likely be a money printing machine for a long time.
They had like $16B in revenue last year, half from Starlink.
That’s just money in the door and the underwriters seem to think the business is worth $1.75T.
If underwriters think it’s worth $1.7T with a $16B revenue (not profit), they’re doing the same thing as the credit agencies did in 2008 by giving underwater mortgage backed securities a AAA rating.
Do you have any evidence or analysis to back that up? How are those similar?
It's not the same at all. Do you know how an IPO roadshow works at all or are you just spouting bullshit?
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They are decades ahead of their nearest competition, in multiple verticals, and their barrier to entry is a literal gravity well.
All the money they are burning is for grok. And it is not decades ahead.
BO has entered the chat New Glenn and are arguably equal to Super Heavy given they've also recovered and reused their heavy booster.
I think you're going to be surprised at the level of competition BO provides SpaceX in the Artemis program.
About those underwriters - to quote the venerable Charlie Munger "they will sell 'shit' as long as 'shit' can be sold".
the ability to mine the moon or asteroid belt seems extremely lucrative, the logistics of transporting materials to earth costs less than shipping them across the ocean, an astounding level of value creation.
This can’t a serious comment.
Did you notice the size of the Artemis rocket and the size of the payload it sends to the moon and back?
Do you expect there to be diamonds just laying these on the moon surface, no mining required.
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There is no other mode of transportation cheaper than shipping across the ocean.
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It is valuable if they can find the right rocks and bring them back. A platinum group metal asteroid would be of immense value, at least the first one anyways. After that who knows, they might super saturate the global market for decades.
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It is less about profitability and more about dilution of ownership. He seems to have a pattern of diluting the ownership of his profitable companies by folding in his less profitable/failed companies. You still own a share of a profitable company, but a smaller share, to his benefit.
Im also profitable as an individual. I made a $100 this week, which makes me worth at least $30M.
SpaceX was profitable before the xAI thing happened. Now I imagine they're way in the red.
As was Enron
Pretty decent video released today by Wall Street Millennial that looks at the profitability of SpaceX (as part of looking at 'Terafab') :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSJi1oQFQzs
In part thanks to SpaceX purchase of CyberTrucks.
SpaceX was surely more profitable before it was used to bail out Elon's xAI which was used to bailout his purchase of Twitter.
Have you looked at their latest report?
They are only profitable because of subsidies. Pretty much 1:1.
just because a bunch of rockets went up without blowing up, does not mean they are profitable. it cost money to shot rocket, and it is very expensive, reusable or not. most launches are internal launch without external paying customers.
How much of that profit was due to public subsidies of the sort that he killed for other companies but not for himself during his tenure as a special government employee?
Genuine question, how do you know that without a 10K? Have the filed any document that shows their finances?
Tesla’s profits and market share has been declining for the past few years and it’s basically an overpriced meme stock.
Their market share of EVs in the US went from 40.9% in Q3 2025 to 58.9% in Q4 2025.
You may not have noticed because positive Musk related news doesn't seem to make headlines anymore.
> Their market share of EVs in the US went from 40.9% in Q3 2025 to 58.9% in Q4 2025.
You’re not wrong factually, but it doesn’t mean what you’re suggesting it means. Their share went up because EVs aren’t selling as much anymore. All companies including Tesla are selling fewer EVs. They just have a bigger share of the smaller pie, which isn’t exactly a success when you only sell EVs, but your competitors also sell non EVs.
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Tesla has a P/E ratio of 364.981. It's blatant fraud.
Nobody is forced to buy shares of any company. Even automatic 401k investment plans let you specify what to buy if you so choose. Perhaps you could make the argument Elon makes false promises to boost the stock price, but at the end of the day, individual investors must decide what they believe in no matter the CEO's antics.