Comment by geertj
14 hours ago
SpaceX reuses its boosters 20+ times. Surely the depreciation is tiny when compared to the revenue of 60M+ per launch?
14 hours ago
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.
3x growth in ten years is the “most generous” estimate?
Yes because outside Starlink and govt contracts, there isn’t that massive of a demand growth in the sector. There a limit to how many satellites can be in orbit at a time and land based telecom infrastructure makes it so that satellite based infra isn’t necessary unless you’re in remote areas.
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How can you say “The company isn’t worth X”? Isn’t the company worth exactly as much as people are willing to pay for its shares?
I don’t personally think Google is worth $4T but the share price says otherwise.
You’re comparing a publicly traded company where the supply demand economics have established a price to a company whose financials are not public, and is valuing itself at $1.7T and forcing everyone’s 401Ks and pension funds to fund it. Not the same thing.
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When someone says that it usually means they believe the price is bound to drop.
> Isn’t the company worth exactly as much as people are willing to pay for its shares?
Really? We're still making claims like this in the year of our Lord 2026? People in the markets today are not predicting the real value of a company, they're gambling that the various political and financial machinations from people like Elon Musk will increase the share price enough that they can sell at a profit. The value of shares like Tesla are utterly disconnected from the value of the underlying business.
They also have to replace 20%+ of their satellite network every year.
why is that ?
They are low earth orbit satellites. Generally, the lower the orbit, the faster they decay. You could also argue that this is a benefit in that they gain updated technology with each replacement.
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The operational lifetime of their satellites is about 5 years.
Because they fall back to the ground…
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low earth orbit
because of gravity
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What about the R&D costs of blowing up vehicle after vehicle?
They have over 300 falcon 9 launches in a row now, just in case you’re not caught up on the latest
C'mon, you know they're talking about Starship.
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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.
They did report FCF before xai and also invested at least $1B before they merged xai
Given that it's one Musk company giving a mountain of money to another, and the only numbers floating around regarding SpaceX seem like marketing fluff, I don't think any meaningful conclusions can be reached until we get some real numbers giving a full look at the finances.