[HN Gopher] A look into the finances of SpaceX
___________________________________________________________________
A look into the finances of SpaceX
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 127 points
Date : 2023-08-17 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Don't worry about SpaceX, it's now an essential part of the US
| military. Without SpaceX's satellite internet the war in Ukraine
| would have been much hard to deal with. SpaceX's capacity to
| launch rockets two or three times a week is something the US
| military is war gaming around, never mind the same thing but soon
| with the Starship. SpaceX is in good hands just as its increasing
| enterprise value shows.
| josefresco wrote:
| [flagged]
| bell-cot wrote:
| From Reuters...
|
| > In 2022, revenue doubled to $4.6 billion, helping the company
| reduce its loss last year to $559 million from $968 million, the
| WSJ reported.
|
| > The company reported about $5.2 billion in total expenses for
| 2022, up from $3.3 billion the year earlier, according to the
| report.
|
| That $5.2B of expenses got 61 successful, production Falcon
| rocket launches in 2022. Vs. some pretty-reasonable estimates put
| the total cost of NASA's "Space Launch System" at ~$5B _per
| individual launch_.
| oblio wrote:
| It's ridiculous what amounts of money these ventures can siphon
| away in the US. See Uber, AirBNB, etc. I'm not saying they
| don't pay off, but these businesses literally choke most
| international competition.
|
| There are probably 1-2 countries in the world that can afford
| to keep running a business with losses at around $1bn per year.
| pixl97 wrote:
| $1b loss in the space industry is probably the smallest loss
| for any business in said industry in history. Every launch of
| the space shuttle was a few billion used up. There has been
| no completion here, because before SpaceX everyone else was
| launching 100M-1B+ of rocket that was never reused and other
| than the payload was a write off. It is always financed by
| government because there is typically a much larger
| generalized payoff for the nation state involved regarding
| capabilities.
| oblio wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not talking strictly about SpaceX. I don't know
| if I have the exact name, but I'm quite sure that one of
| the big unicorns, probably Uber, was running for several
| years with multi-billion dollar losses.
|
| Again, that's utterly unthinkable for Mercedes or Renault
| or Mitsubish or Samsung or...
|
| They'd just go under because the rest of the world still
| has economic gravity, i.e. everything must come down in
| case of no profits.
| [deleted]
| reso wrote:
| You can't compare falcon to SLS because Falcon cannot do what
| SLS does.
|
| You can't compare SpaceX's figures to NASA because NASA has
| many, many more reporting obligations than SpaceX.
|
| Every report on Falcon 9 costs has made this mistake forever.
| SpaceX does not release their full costs. What numbers we have
| for them are PR releases. Meanwhile, NASA's budgets are public
| and comprehensive, and they have legal parameters on what they
| _have to_ include in their statements about costs that SpaceX
| does not have.
| jonas21 wrote:
| The article isn't based on information SpaceX released. The
| WSJ got their hands on internal financial documents.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| >Falcon cannot do what SLS does.
|
| Thus far, SLS has only done once what Falcon does on the
| regular: Launch a payload into orbit
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Every report on Falcon 9 costs has made this mistake
| forever. SpaceX does not release their full costs.
|
| Not really relevant.
|
| The correct metric to make the comparison on is the fully
| amortized cost to the government per launch. The government
| doesn't pay for SpaceX's facilities or development - all of
| those costs are rolled into the launch price. But that's not
| true of SLS.
| reso wrote:
| It is not possible to do a fair comparison of launch costs
| between Falcon 9 and other platforms without knowing the
| true cost of Falcon 9 launches.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > It is not possible to do a fair comparison of launch
| costs between Falcon 9 and other platforms without
| knowing the true cost of Falcon 9 launches.
|
| I don't know why you're so obsessed with cost. The only
| thing that matters when it comes to commercial providers
| is price. And SpaceX, (as far as I can tell) stands alone
| among the medium-heavy lift providers by providing a
| price directly on their website.
|
| Of course, for government launches the government
| typically wants extra services, which does boost the
| prices different levels for different missions (I think
| the Europa Clipper mission is particularly expensive for
| example). But all of those missions are competitively
| bid, and SpaceX tends to be the low price bidder, so
| those extra fees seem like they're probably pretty
| reasonable.
| moffkalast wrote:
| 61 launches is quite a lot. The SLS can do about 100 tons to
| LEO, a standard F9 can do 22 tons albeit with a much smaller
| fairing.
|
| So in total if you split your vehicle up and assemble it in
| orbit you can launch one that's almost 5x the size for the
| same price. Maybe more like 3x + extra engineering overhead
| costs for the orbital assembly, but still much more bang for
| the buck. The lunar gateway is planned to be a station anyway
| so those costs will have to be paid regardless.
| jackmott wrote:
| [dead]
| resolutebat wrote:
| At time of writing, it's the opposite: Falcon is launching
| humans into space on a regular basis, something SLS has
| entirely failed to do to date.
| penjelly wrote:
| my search says falcon has launches humans twice. Am i
| mistaken? that doesnt qualify as "regular basis"
| electriclove wrote:
| It has been the only way for the US to launch humans from
| the US since 2020.
|
| 10 flights with humans so far and more planned:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_2
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Crew-1 to Crew-6, DM-2, Inspiration 4, Axiom 1, Axiom 2
|
| 10 missions
|
| A crewed mission to the ISS every 6 months plus a handful
| of commercials.
|
| Your numbers are way off.
| nordsieck wrote:
| And Crew-7 is about to take off in a week or so.
| penjelly wrote:
| thanks, thats what i get for asking bing instead of
| looking myself
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Ah the penalty of dated LLM models
| input_sh wrote:
| Crew-1 and Crew-2 happened before September 2021.
| penjelly wrote:
| technically bing should have access to this regardless
| because it can access the internet (despite its training
| cutoff date) but its my fault for not digging deeper and
| trusting its output
| [deleted]
| ISL wrote:
| SLS hasn't yet been asked to launch a human.
| toss1 wrote:
| Only because SLS has so far _failed to qualify_ to launch
| a human.
|
| SLS _was_ on the schedule to launch humans several years
| ago. However, failing to qualify means that NASA can NOT
| ask them to launch a human
| Teever wrote:
| He says, implying that this is the only thing stopping
| that from happening.
|
| Is SLS even certified to carry people into space yet?
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Is SLS even certified to carry people into space yet?
|
| It better be because Artemis-II will have people aboard
| Orion.
| cypress66 wrote:
| Falcon isn't really comparable to the SLS, but yes the SLS is
| awful cost wise. Starship will almost surely be between one and
| two orders of magnitude cheaper per launch vs SLS.
| pfdietz wrote:
| A rational return to the moon program that had to choose
| between Falcon and SLS would choose Falcon.
| stetrain wrote:
| If the primary goal is sustainable payloads to the moon. I
| think Congress considers this a secondary goal over funding
| and jobs being directed at their states.
| fooker wrote:
| > funding and jobs being directed at their states.
|
| This is more important than it seems on the surface and
| is often a good thing.
|
| You want to train and preserve local expertise with heavy
| industries.
|
| That ensures generations of successful companies
| rejuvenating your economy as opposed to relying on
| federal handouts.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It completely fails as a justification for SLS, though.
| It's preserving nonsense that needs to die, instead of
| pushing the actually successful part of commercial space.
| fooker wrote:
| How do you recon Spacex has managed to recruit several
| thousand US citizens with the proper expertise?
|
| These people don't grow on trees(/classrooms).
| avmich wrote:
| Surprisingly NASA, or ULA, couldn't recruit those very
| same citizens.
| oivey wrote:
| You'd probably have to figure out on orbit manufacturing,
| then, so I don't think that is at all clear.
| pfdietz wrote:
| On-orbit assembly, the demonstration of which was the
| single actual real accomplishment of the Space Station
| program. And yet NASA just threw that in the garbage.
|
| If we can't do something as simple as assemble modules in
| space, exactly what sort of future do you imagine is
| waiting for us in space?
| oivey wrote:
| Maybe they used that experience decide that it would be
| cheaper to just build a huge rocket? The ISS also had the
| benefit of the shuttle, while US flights to LEO were in
| turmoil when the SLS was funded. It also wasn't clear in
| hindsight how completely and utterly inept Boeing was and
| how effective SpaceX was going to be.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's grossly more expensive the way they are doing it.
| They were originally going to use smaller commercial
| launchers until Senator Shelby and others held a
| political knife to their throats.
|
| SLS has absolutely no redeeming features. You're sunk
| deep in Stockholm Syndrome if you're still defending it.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Falcon rockets can't get to the moon. You need a lot more
| fuel to do that. That's why SLS and Starship are both being
| developed.
| pfdietz wrote:
| SLS is needed only because they were not allowed to adopt
| on-orbit propellant transfer. With rockets like the
| Falcons, propellant (which is most of the mass needed to
| get something to the moon) is launched in smaller
| quantities and accumulated.
|
| What sort of future in space do those advocating SLS
| imagine for us if moving a liquid from one tank to
| another is too challenging?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| One where we just launch one rocket instead of building a
| giant orbital bomb slowly (accumulating fuel) and
| transferring all those explosives through a complex
| series of difficult rendezvous maneuvers? One rocket is
| risky enough.
|
| There's a huge amount of extra risk involved in that sort
| of idea, which is why NASA isn't doing it, which can just
| be avoided with SLS and Starship.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's actually less risky. Most of the launches are of
| propellant, which is completely replaceable. Reliability
| of a launcher is achieved by using it many many times,
| exposing all the gotchas. SLS will launch so infrequently
| it will be extremely risky.
|
| And you didn't answer my question, so I will answer it
| for you. If simply transferring a liquid from one tank to
| another is too risky, then there is no future in space.
| No activities of any significance could ever be done
| there. With that established, we can shut down the human
| space program and lose nothing of value.
| swid wrote:
| Falcon Heavy is capable of going to the Moon or even
| Mars.
| avmich wrote:
| In 1990's Dan Goldin, the NASA administrator at the time,
| was looking for ways to return to the Moon for cheap. One
| of the least expensive variants which was presented
| included launching multiple Protons and assembling lunar
| exeditionary complexes on LEO. The quoted number at that
| time was $1 billion to put boots on regolith again.
|
| Falcon-9 is about as capable in terms of payload as
| Proton. And even without inflation the launch price is
| comparable. So, Falcon-9 is quite capable to get people
| on the Moon. It isn't really considered because there are
| other options and some additional requirements.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| That plan was rejected for the reasons I stated in a
| sibling comment.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Completely terrible reasons. There is no good
| justification for SLS.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And NASA will probably be very happy to use such a cheap
| system once they are convinced it meets their reliability
| standards. The point of SLS IMO is to keep a backup option if
| SpaceX has some horrific, unpredicted setback or design
| problem.
|
| Surely people understand redundancy in aerospace right?
| grimwall wrote:
| The point of SLS is pork, full stop.
| lamontcg wrote:
| SLS is about maintaining the ability of the US to build
| rocket engines like the RS-25 and those massive SRBs. The
| Government is worried about waking up some morning and
| China has leapfrogged us to the Moon and it'll take 20
| years for us to institutionally remember how to get back
| there. And SpaceX has not yet demonstrated the ability to
| land humans on the Moon while NASA has. They're making
| sure that we can definitely still use big dumb stupid
| expensive technology to get there. If Starship works they
| may wind up pivoting away from SLS in the future, but
| then SpaceX will also get to take its pick up the remains
| of that program and their engineers (if they aren't
| already benefiting from a lot of cross-pollination).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| And yet only one of SLS and Starship has reached orbit.
| avmich wrote:
| And yet the point of SLS is pork, full stop. That is
| reached orbit, surprisingly, is less than relevant.
| dahfizz wrote:
| You are giving members of congress way too much credit.
| They don't care about the moon one bit, SLS is just a jobs
| program
| lokar wrote:
| It's more a subsidy to defense contractors
| bespokedevelopr wrote:
| A jobs program just for their districts. A key
| distinction.
| pstuart wrote:
| The Military Industrial Complex has entered the chat...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That ~$5billion per launch includes a lot of amortized R&D and
| other costs that you are not counting in the 61 successful
| Falcon launches. It may be that the Falcon launchers are
| significantly cheaper, but the accounting methods are too
| different to just compare numbers.
| bell-cot wrote:
| FWIW, here's a fairly deep (and charitable) article on the SLS
| by Eric Berger -
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/the-sls-rocket-is-th...
| jve wrote:
| Part of those expenses are probably building starlink and
| starship r&d. I suspect F9 no longer has significant r&d
| expenses.
|
| I wonder if your NASA figure also includes first launch, that
| may include r&d?! Because for a single launch, when you
| substract r&d or even spread out across all planned launches -
| can't be that high...
|
| I'm just for comparing apples to apples not apples to oranges.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Brief, if almost 4-year-old article:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-does-not-
| deny-t...
|
| The ~$5B figure is in the final para. And that _still_ sounds
| like it excludes ground systems and Orion development costs.
| (Plus ~4 more years of ever-growing bloat, obviously.)
| nordsieck wrote:
| > The ~$5B figure is in the final para. And that still
| sounds like it excludes ground systems and Orion
| development costs. (Plus ~4 more years of ever-growing
| bloat, obviously.)
|
| There is a much more official and up to date figure:
|
| > We project the cost to fly a single SLS/Orion system
| through at least Artemis IV to be $4.1 billion per launch
| at a cadence of approximately one mission per year.
|
| https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf
|
| From what I understand, that number does include ground
| systems.
|
| For what it's worth, NASA leadership continues to contest
| this value, although they refuse to publicly give their own
| value.
|
| To be fair to you, the $4.1B figure does not include
| development costs. I don't think there's an agreed upon way
| to include them, so everyone just mentions them separately.
| And they are quite... large.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| I overheard some high-temperature semiconductor guys ("how do
| you build chips that work on venus / in engine blades / etc")
| at a NASA facility talking about budgets in a way that
| suggested a substantial part of their funding came from the
| launch vehicle budget.
|
| I don't have good intuition for how much of the bloat comes
| from a top-heavy organization, from grifting contractors, and
| from good old fashion boondoggles -- but I'd like to add to
| this pile of possibilities the possibility the categories are
| poorly drawn and that "things which NASA should be doing but
| shouldn't be classified under launch vehicles" are
| nevertheless classified under launch vehicles.
| angiosperm wrote:
| "High-temperature semiconductor" sounds like an xkcd panel.
| Fordec wrote:
| In other news it cost me $1500 to do a year of grocery shopping
| trips while it cost $1500 for one transatlantic return trip
| holiday.
|
| Apples to oranges comparison. 400km to low earth orbit is not
| compatible to a 384400km trip to another gravity well.
| avhon1 wrote:
| Distance is _almost_ completely irrelevant for comparing
| launch vehicles.
|
| Also, Falcon 9 has delivered multiple payloads to lunar
| orbit. Examples are ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 1, SpaceIL's
| Beresheet, and South Korea's Danuri. In interplanetary space,
| the Double Asteroid Redirection Test was launched on a Falcon
| 9.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > some pretty-reasonable estimates put the total cost of NASA's
| "Space Launch System" at ~$5B _per individual launch._
|
| SLS is bad, but it's not quite that bad.
|
| A full launch of SLS + Orion is ~4.1B. A launch of SLS without
| Orion (a theoretical cargo mission) is "just" ~$2.8B.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The SLS is designed to reach political goals, not financial
| targets.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Yep. Nicknamed the "Senate Launch System" for very good
| reason.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| How are Starlink launches accounted for?
|
| Are they considered revenue? Capex? Expenses?
|
| I guess it depends on the exact corporate structure.
| [deleted]
| jameshart wrote:
| Business mileage.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Do airlines also deduct mileage this way? I'm a bit
| incredulous.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| "Okay so we get to deduct per mile so... what do you we just
| spin a few hundred times around the moon before heading back?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Cost of goods sold.
| justrealist wrote:
| I can't imagine any reasonable way to book it as revenue.
| Someone wrote:
| As _oldgradstudent_ said: it depends on the exact corporate
| structure.
|
| Move Starlink into a separate entity, have SpaceX build
| satellites and perform launches for them, and it becomes
| SpaceX revenue (and Starlink costs)
|
| Have SpaceX rent out those satellites to Starlink, and the
| picture changes again.
| justrealist wrote:
| Yes, but they haven't spun Starlink out into a separate
| entity.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| "Revenue meaning is the money that is produced by carrying
| out normal business operations and is calculated by
| multiplying the average sales price by the number of items
| sold."
|
| Starlink is revenue. Starlink Launches are $0 revenue.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Probably cap ex which means they can use depreciation to
| improve their bottom line numbers.
| el_nahual wrote:
| By definition, spending on something that is consumable
| (like a rocket launch) is not a capital expenditure.
|
| A capital expenditure is when you buy something whose value
| slowly decreases with time.
|
| If a factory buys a building for $10MM, it isn't any
| poorer. Yes, it has $10MM less in the bank, but it also has
| a building worth $10MM.
|
| As the building loses value with time the factory gets
| poorer: it's _that_ loss of value which can be depreciated.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Their whole deal is not (entirely) consuming rockets, but
| yeah I get what you mean.
|
| It's cool that a tech change can also change the
| accounting.
| space_fountain wrote:
| A starlink launch takes lots of money but results in
| dozens of new satellites in orbit that in theory could be
| sold to some other company looking to create an internet
| constellation. That doesn't seem that different from a
| factory where it takes money to build the factory, but
| then the factory can, in theory be sold. Yes the launch
| disappears, but the thing the launch did doesn't.
| loandbehold wrote:
| Exactly. Those satellites is an income-generating asset.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Not Capital Expenditure, more like an Operating
| Expenditure.
| loandbehold wrote:
| Wouldn't depreciation reduce their bottom line as opposed
| to improve it?
| [deleted]
| foota wrote:
| Depreciation happens over several years, whereas other
| expenses are immediate, right?
| loandbehold wrote:
| oh i see what you are saying. so depreciation vs
| expensing all at once.
| foota wrote:
| It's more than just a one time thing though, if you
| assume capex increases over time then it's a permanent
| reduction in expenses.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Is there a breakdown of where the money came from? How much is
| coming from Starlink, and how much money are they losing?
| htss2013 wrote:
| Isn't it amazing that you can become the richest person in the
| world by building companies that lose money? By lose money I mean
| all money ever put into the company versus profits made.
|
| The idea of creating a profitless company that somehow makes you
| personally rich used to be thought of as a fluke. Yes it's
| possible but it shouldn't happen and aside from extreme luck it
| won't.
|
| Something has changed. Losing money and getting rich anyway has
| gone from fluke to something else, and it feels like we are lying
| about how the game really works.
| eagleinparadise wrote:
| Amazon never made any money... until it did. And boy were a lot
| of people wrong.
|
| It's plenty easy to lose money and stay poor.
|
| Only a handful of people in the world have "lost money and
| became kings"
|
| Want to do the same? You live in the same capitalistic society
| as Elon/Bezos...
| wddkcs wrote:
| The market is pricing in future growth. You can say the market
| is incorrectly evaluating the potential return, but it's hard
| to argue that Tesla and SpaceX aren't going to cash in on that
| potential. How else should the market be treating companies
| with obvious high growth potential?
| bmitc wrote:
| > The market is pricing in future growth.
|
| Does that answer the question, though? Future growth is an
| estimate and approximation, is not real, and says nothing
| about current revenues and losses.
| zamadatix wrote:
| What you get paid for isn't realized gains rather selling
| your future gains at a rate lower than others (i.e. the
| market) expects them to actual be worth. If the question is
| about how this makes sense then sure, it answers the
| question - you're selling your future gains now to fund the
| company which means the current value of your shares will
| reflect that future predicted value as well. If the
| question is "why without involving any future
| possibilities" then no, it doesn't answer the question, but
| I'm not sure the question makes any more sense than "why is
| the sun so hot ignoring fusion".
|
| Another way to think of it is if I spent 10 billion to make
| a company which now successfully produces gold bricks from
| wood in a way most think I'll be historically net positive
| in 5 years then it's not really a mystery why waiting 5
| years for the number to hit 0 is not particularly relevant
| to when people may be interested in buying parts of the
| company.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| It is very possible, even probable, that Tesla's glory days
| are already behind it.
|
| Their margin are contracting, and it's actually probable they
| will loose money in Q3, Q4 this year. They don't have any
| significant advantage on competition anymore, and China's
| competition is already well ahead Tesla.
|
| Elon himself suggested Tesla is worthless as a 'car making
| company' and it's value will come from solving autonomy with
| FSD. While Tesla is very good at marketing, there were 2
| companies allowed to operate self-driving taxis in SF past
| month, and there are already several operating in China. It's
| hard to argue that Tesla still has the lead in that domain.
| fredgrott wrote:
| You need to re-read Elon,
|
| It's not that he will solve FSD, Tesla is valuable until
| FSD is solved as then it becomes just a car company.
|
| And he picked the correct impossible puzzle that will never
| be solved. Same with the SpaceX premise.
|
| The market value is the desire of groups of people that it
| be solved.
|
| The lesson here is what impossible problem is our domains
| that we can market that our company is attempting to solve
| it and which of those impossible problems happens to
| intersect with a large group of people wanting said problem
| solved.
| phlipski wrote:
| By this logic someone should start a company promising to
| cure cancer then just let the trillions roll in....
| asynchronous wrote:
| I don't understand how people say this with a straight face
| when Tesla is literally becoming the underlying charging
| network for the entire continental US. If anything they're
| at a higher risk of the feds absorbing them as a public
| utility then they are of becoming irrelevant.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Is there a company with _any_ sort of network
| (electrical, cellular, or otherwise) that 's worth nearly
| 700B?
|
| No one said irrelevant either, but that their best days
| are behind them. From an investor's point of view that
| could certainly be correct.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Not irrelevant - but not making money neither.
|
| Look at the financials of this 'underlying charging
| network for the entire continental US' - the optimistic
| ones, project that it will bring ... 10B$ in revenues in
| 5-10 years (revenues, not profit !).
|
| It's absolutely meaningless in the big picture of this
| company revenues and valuation.
| jandrese wrote:
| > it's actually probable they will loose money in Q3, Q4
| this year.
|
| This doesn't jive with their investor guidance, nor the
| sales figures. I'm curious where this prediction is coming
| from.
|
| Maybe it is due to the capital expenditures from all of the
| new factories being built?
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| It's from the fact that the demand is falling and they
| need to slash prices to continue to sell. They benefited
| greatly from Covid price surges, but this is about to
| end. In a 'normal' year, they can't sell that many cars
| at the prices they did last year - let alone in a
| 'recession' year.
|
| I don't think their did any investor guidance about
| profits - I may be wrong though.
|
| Re factories - I don't think they are building any new
| factories now - are they ? The only one announced is
| Mexico, but they still don't even have the official
| permits yet.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The problem with that argument is you have to have some sort
| of evidence that the market more or less does this correctly
| most of the time.
|
| We're depending on the feedback mechanism here working
| correctly. If it doesn't, we are rewarding unproductive
| behaviours.
| davmar wrote:
| evidence: amazon.com
| d136o wrote:
| I am not a finance professional but...
|
| Say you make $1 of profit, does that translate into $1 your
| company can control for its benefit? If kept as profit part of
| that dollar flows out of the company, to other companies and
| possibly to the government as taxes (god forbid).
|
| If the company reinvests then it fully benefits from its would
| be $1 as opposed to someone spending it elsewhere.
|
| IMO Accounting is the only reason many companies don't turn an
| external "profit"
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Wait until you learn about the biotech industry, they often go
| public with no revenue. I don't think there is anything wrong
| with this though, markets are pricing future growth, which may
| or may not materialize.
| getoffmycase wrote:
| Biotech and drug discovery is inherently gambling. Most May
| tank, but some have the potential to 10-20x. Traditionally
| their IPOs allowed them to spread the risk out broadly
| amongst the public. Then they somehow became stupidly
| overvalued in 2020-2021
| [deleted]
| screye wrote:
| SpaceX funding is covert US defense spending. It is the most
| efficient $ spent by Pentagon.
|
| It us economically inefficient but every thing in US defense is
| so mindbogglingly economically inefficient that it makes SpaceX
| look like amazing value. (and IMO justifiably so)
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Tesla doesnt lose money. It has been profitable for the past 14
| quarters in a row. SpaceX clearly could be profitable if it
| wanted to be, and it clearly will be in the future. It will
| probably be very profitable.
|
| Most tech companies lose money before they make money. Amazon
| lost a shitload of money before it started turning a profit,
| now Jeff Bezos is the 2nd richest person in the world.
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| Tesla accumulated surplus/deficit (e.g. lifetime net
| consumption of cash) is much higher than it's lifetime gross
| burn ($6B) so it's definitely in material value creation
| territory.
| marvin wrote:
| This has also been clear to dedicated observers since 2017
| or so, albeit with significant unresolved risk. The market
| finally priced it in around 2019-2020.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > Amazon lost a shitload of money before it started turning
| a profit
|
| Amazon businss model was/is based on selling books/toys etc.
| online. Basically Walmart but online + obsession over
| customer and improving the quality of life of the customer +
| AWS Cloud.
|
| Tesla business model is based on the political choice to do
| away with fossil fuels. They aren't the same.
|
| Tesla is the product of a centrally planned economy because
| the avg. person didn't jumpstart the Tesla/EV phenomenon.
| Matter of fact when the avg. person is left free to choose
| with their wallet they stil buy ICE cars, despite all the
| billions in subsidies, funny math and psyop over the
| population to convince them that they are evil because they
| don't have the same time horizion of a SV billionaire who
| thinks that we should go to Mars because the Earth will be
| destroyed by the sun 5bn years from now.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Used to, as of when? The good old days of the 1990s? I think it
| goes back a lot further than that.
|
| For a much more thorough look at how our modern financial
| systems produce what naive thinkers would consider to be
| bizarre results, I highly recommend Mariana Mazzucato's "The
| Value of Everything." It's a challenging read, but it goes into
| the details of how economic and political thought has shifted
| over the centuries regarding the concept of wealth and value
| creation, and how the game really works.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| She also gave a talk in 2019 called "Rethinking Value" at the
| Long Now Foundation:
| https://longnow.org/seminars/02019/jun/24/rethinking-value/
| Dig1t wrote:
| SpaceX is investing a ton of money into Starship/RnD.
|
| Those investments will basically be a money printer by lowering
| the cost to orbit drastically below any possible competitor.
|
| It's a long term play and it's very smart.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Yes SpaceX loses money, but it doesn't matter because it's a
| nationally strategic company. It's valuation makes sense given
| the Griffin discussion below.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=37166675
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| Not sure why this is being upvoted. They are launching mass
| into space at between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude lower cost
| than anyone else. The R+D costs on that is insane. And they are
| almost profitable.
|
| I 100% agree that du-jour saas companies raising 300MM on
| limited revenue is one thing, but this is not the same.
| electriclove wrote:
| There is a lot of hate on anything Elon does. The market is
| valuing his companies based on exactly what you stated. If
| people read the mission statements of these companies and
| listen to what Elon says, it is pretty clear on what his
| goals are. And contrary to what most believe, it is not to
| make himself tons of money.
|
| These companies are going to make money as a means to
| accomplish their goals. The control could shift away from him
| in the future and then at that point the goals could change
| to shareholder profits but that is not the case currently.
| pengaru wrote:
| [flagged]
| busterarm wrote:
| TDS has evolved into MDS.
| exodontist wrote:
| By TDS do you mean people disgusted by the 4x indicted
| rapist ex us president? And that that disgust has somehow
| morphed into a dislike for a south african immigrant who
| became the wealthiest man in America?
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > read the mission statements
|
| Musk has been making mission statements ever since the days
| of Paypal. It's been 30 long years.
|
| And he has never delivered tangible quality of life
| improvement for the avarage American
|
| You can hate on Gates and Bezos and Zuck, tell you what, I
| will be joining you in that fight. But the products and
| services that they signed off are everywhere in society and
| if you disappeared them you'd have chaos if not outright
| civil war by the end of the month. (Note that I said
| 'signed off' not 'built')
|
| Disappear Tesla and SpaceX and you'd have the manbun and
| big latte crowd throw a tantrum on ExTwitter and not much
| else. Life will go on as usual, for all practical purposes
| it's like you disappeared Tiffany&CO
| bradgessler wrote:
| > Disappear Tesla and SpaceX and you'd have the manbun
| and big latte crowd throw a tantrum on ExTwitter and not
| much else. Life will go on as usual, for all practical
| purposes it's like you disappeared Tiffany&CO
|
| Tell that to the people who depend on StarLink for rural
| internet access.
| joachimma wrote:
| Really? If Microsoft disappeared we would see a massive
| jump in Linux and Mac usage. If Facebook/Instagram people
| would jump on the next social fad. If Amazon disappears
| people would buy there stuff from some BigBox store. If
| AWS disappears that would be really painful for a while
| before people adopt.
|
| On the other hand. If Tesla disappears all the
| competitors will keep milking their ICE cars, since none
| of there EV make any profit. If Starlink disappears
| Ukraine is fucked, yes even if Elon has secretly given
| Putin access to all the satellites or whatever is the
| rumor of the day.
| bagels wrote:
| He makes a lot of false claims, but Starlink, and maybe
| Tesla essentially creating the market for electric cars?
| reaperman wrote:
| > And he has never delivered tangible quality of life
| improvement for the avarage American
|
| Neither has Ferrari or Rolex but that doesn't make them
| failures. Most of Musk's companies deliver good value to
| customer, just not cash flow profits from revenue to the
| companies themselves. They do somehow still deliver
| profit to shareholders via stock price movements though.
| It's not clear if Tesla will ever achieve long-term cash
| flow solvency but for now most customers are happy, and
| most shareholders are happy.
|
| SpaceX seems like it won't be super difficult to achieve
| long-term positive cash flow. They're dumping tons of
| cash into Starship R&D but the expected returns are
| great. There really isn't any competition knocking on
| their door so they'll have at least a decade of
| uncontested pricing/margin dominance.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > Neither has Ferrari or Rolex but that doesn't make
| them failures
|
| In fact Rolex, Ferrari, Fender etc. aren't valued at 680
| billions. They are valued like status symbol companies .
| Again like Tiffany & CO.
|
| As they should be, Musk convinced people that Tesla will
| deliver 'Standard Oil-esque type quality of life jump in
| the life of the avg. citizen.
|
| Instead it's just a Ferrari made in Silicon Valley. When
| people will wake up it's gonna hurt many people who
| believed in this dream, which was more a mirage tbh.
| runnerup wrote:
| I don't know what you want us all to agree on here. It
| sounds like GP disputed you setting the bar at "should
| have improved the lives of most Americans". That did seem
| like an unreasonable bar to judge companies by.
|
| It's not super controversial that Tesla is likely
| overvalued, but shareholders generally still have a
| reasonable expectation of upside on new shares purchased
| so they continue to buy. I'd hope most of the qualified
| shareholders understand those returns are coming from
| speculation rather than valuation.
|
| "Silicon Valley" seems inaccurate, most Tesla employees
| are in Nevada, Texas and China.
|
| Also you talked about "Elons companies", not just Tesla.
| The only company I can think of that maybe hadn't been
| delivering value to both customers and shareholders is
| SolarCity. It's acquisition was super sketchy but it no
| longer exists in any case.
| rurp wrote:
| > listen to what Elon says, it is pretty clear on what his
| goals are. And contrary to what most believe, it is not to
| make himself tons of money.
|
| If you believe that, I have a social network to sell you...
|
| Come on, the guy who keeps cozying up to the political
| party that denies global warming and loathes environmental
| protections is just looking out for the planet? The guy who
| spends hours on twitter trolling people, and refuses to
| honor contracts and severance payments is actually a
| misunderstood good guy?
|
| Elon is great at attracting talented people and investors
| to his companies, and a big part of that is his ability to
| spin a compelling yarn about saving the planet or living on
| mars bases. That doesn't mean he's actually trying to save
| humanity. We're already seeing him pivot to a totally
| different persona, or maybe just not bothering to hide his
| true self as much.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In addition to what other people have said, it's important to
| note that Elon Musk hasn't realized any gains from SpaceX.
|
| There's a huge difference between unrealized value and actual
| profit.
|
| It's like living in a house worth 1 million. That doesn't mean
| that you have a million dollars to spend on toys. The value
| might go down or the house might get trashed.
| mgolawala wrote:
| The valuation of the company has little to do with the equation
| of how much profit has been made in the past. It is focused on
| the companies profit potential in the future. This has always
| been the case.
|
| Sears or Ford may have produced a ton more in profit than was,
| as you say, put into the company. But the current valuation is
| based on what profit the market believes it will produce in the
| future.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think what amazes OP is that "convincing people that profit
| will happen in the future" produces better stock value than
| actual profit happening today. We all know that's how it
| works but it's still amazing. The market is clearly showing
| that a bird in hand is worth less than two that might be in
| the bush 10 years from now.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > This has always been the case
|
| Musk is 50, already past his intellectual prime. Has been an
| entrepreneur (or at least he claims) ever since he was 20.
|
| If he hasn't delivered any profit in 30 years, it's clear
| that his business model is based on politics, subsidies and
| aggressive promotion to sell the stock and enrich himself as
| opposed to building something that improves the quality of
| life of the avg. citizen.
| nabla9 wrote:
| He is a socialist hero then?
|
| Wages before profits. His companies has paid worker salaries
| from day one and continues to pay wages for over 127,000 people
| every month.
|
| /s
| elitan wrote:
| Great take!
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| We are living in 'incredible' times indeed - what used to
| happen during market bubbles, became the norm recently.
|
| This chart is quite amazing:
|
| https://apolloacademy.com/40-of-companies-in-russell-2000-ha...
|
| In Russell 2000, 40% companies lost money in 2022. It's higher
| than the peak of dot-com bubble, and almost as high as at the
| worst of financial crisis in 2008-2009. And it seems to be the
| norm lately. Eventually though, everything comes back to earth.
| lamontcg wrote:
| If you have a growth company with high return on capital the
| worst thing to do would be to return the operating profits as
| taxed dividends or just sit on the cash or something like that.
| If you can grow the business then the best thing to do with
| those operating profits is to pump it back into expanding the
| business and the capital and capturing more revenue next year.
| You aren't losing money, you're building a larger economic
| engine for capturing future cashflows, which is doing your
| investors a favor since they'll own a larger chunk of the
| economy next year.
|
| This assumes that the business is, of course, growing though
| and growing at a faster rate than the economy and its
| competitors, and that it has a positive return on capital from
| the core of the business.
|
| A growing company with high return on capital which is not
| aggressively reinvesting in itself would be a red flag.
|
| This should go in one of those "Myths that Engineers Believe
| about Finance" that all companies that don't produce profits
| are bad.
| VHRanger wrote:
| There's a difference between accounting profits and economic
| profits.
|
| Growing a company that loses on its unit economics (eg.
| WeWork) ought not to make founders rich
| pavon wrote:
| Those numbers are pretty remarkable given how much money they are
| pouring into developing Starship and expanding Starlink right
| now. Over half of their launches have been for Starlink, and yet
| they are close to turning a profit on revenue from the other half
| and Starlink subscriptions.
| [deleted]
| pixl97 wrote:
| When it comes to launching other payloads, there is very little
| competition out there. Falcon 9 has proven itself itself very
| reliable and first stage reusability has put them in the place
| where they can always be under the competitors costs (but not
| too much under).
| stephenitis wrote:
| Is there a way for a mortal to buy or invest into SpaceX or are
| we just waiting for an IPO eventually?
| more_corn wrote:
| There is a secondary market for privately held shares.
| imkevinxu wrote:
| It's available on https://sandhillmarkets.com/
| [deleted]
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Accredited Investors can invest via Special Purpose Vehicles
| when SpaceX is raising a round, or buy secondary shares if they
| know of anyone selling (sometimes these types of secondary
| offerings are listed on AngelList). A few years ago I saw
| someone on Twitter organizing an SPV to participate in their
| funding round at the time and the minimum commitment was $250K.
|
| Mortality Assessments are left as an exercise for the reader.
| IshKebab wrote:
| There's no point investing in it now. Everyone knows they are
| doing amazingly well and are hugely valuable. It's not a
| secret.
| MR4D wrote:
| SpaceX is the second biggest holding in The Private Shares Fund
| [0].
|
| This is an Interval Fund - effectively a mutual fund except
| that you can only sell it one day per quarter due to limited
| liquidity.
|
| [0] - https://privatesharesfund.com/portfolio/
| jacquesm wrote:
| Does that mean you're buying out employees with stock or
| others that have bought out employees with stock or is the
| some other raise from the past?
| Laremere wrote:
| Go work for them on a position that has equity as part of the
| compensation.
|
| Otherwise, I doubt it. Elon has been pretty vocal about
| regretting making Tesla public. Additionally SpaceX as a
| company is oriented around putting humans on mars. Until that
| happens, I expect a supermajority of ownership would be against
| the profit seeking motives that an IPO creates.
|
| Short of investing in them, you could look for companies in
| industries that are likely to benefit from cheaper space
| access. Might have an easier time there.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Making Tesla public was clearly elons best ever decision lol.
| The moment it went ballistic in early 2020 made it well
| worthwhile - Tesla has access to an effectively unlimited
| pile of cash from public investors (and gave Elon more money
| than he could possibly hope for to invest in other pursuits)
| bob1029 wrote:
| > Short of investing in them, you could look for companies in
| industries that are likely to benefit from cheaper space
| access.
|
| I've been investing heavily in domestic tooling,
| manufacturing and construction. Screw chasing _only_ SpaceX,
| wouldn 't you also like to capitalize on things like our
| gigantic semiconductor mfg build-out?
|
| Playing the supply chain is often times better than having
| direct access to the thing you want exposure to. It's just
| not as fun for certain elements of the monkey brain to
| operate one or two degrees removed.
| DennisP wrote:
| That thought occurred to me but I couldn't find an ETF or
| an easy way to find the right companies. How do you go
| about it?
| bob1029 wrote:
| What I do is browse aimlessly through RH until see a tag
| like "Industrials". Then, I click this and I can see a
| list of like 50 companies that do all things yellow-
| square in sim city.
|
| It's like fish in a barrel if you have patience to sort
| through the information and type fake contact info into
| investor web forms to get at presentation materials.
|
| You definitely don't need a Bloomberg terminal
| subscription to do this stuff.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Talk of putting people on Mars is how they recruit young
| idealistic engineers. I think to understand what SpaceX is
| actually about you need to understand who Michael Griffin is
| and what he's all about. He went with Musk when he tried to
| buy an ICBM from Russia; he conceived of NASA's Commercial
| Resupply Services program and gave the contract to SpaceX,
| before SpaceX had ever put anything into orbit. Ditto the
| Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract. It's not
| an exaggeration to say that SpaceX would not exist if not for
| Michael Griffin.
|
| Read about the rest of his career and I think you'll figure
| it out:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
| didibus wrote:
| > During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and
| accompanied him on a trip to Russia
|
| > In December 2008, with SpaceX again on the verge of
| bankruptcy, Griffin awarded SpaceX along with his own
| Orbital Sciences company each contracts with a combined
| value of $3.5 billion
|
| It's crazy how nepotism is still such an important aspect
| of success today.
|
| It's very likely had they never known each other, SpaceX
| would not exist today, and some other company would have
| thrived instead.
|
| I also don't understand how it's not a conflict of interest
| to award his own company that contract?
| mcpackieh wrote:
| It's very likely that if Michael Griffin and Elon Musk
| had never met, Elon Musk would not be in the space
| business at all and Michael Griffin would have induced
| some other person to play the same role. Orbital Sciences
| and SpaceX both exist to make "proliferated" LEO
| constellations possible. He founded one and had his
| fingers all over the founding of the other. He's gone
| above and beyond to keep both these companies afloat.
|
| Considering the nature and role of the LEO constellation
| Michael Griffin wants to build, remember Elon Musk's talk
| about "preventing extinction". Ostensibly he's talking
| about making a 'backup' population of humanity on Mars,
| but that makes zero sense. Serious customers for Mars
| colonization don't actually exist and SpaceX hasn't
| invested in the development of Mars habitat technology
| themselves. What they're actually doing is developing
| boosters capable of launching proliferated LEO
| constellations for feasible amounts of money (a
| capability SpaceX is now demonstrating with Starlink.)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >I also don't understand how it's not a conflict of
| interest to award his own company that contract?
|
| This kind of inside dealing is just the status quo in
| american businesses today. Every CEO is on the board of
| the companies where their board members are CEOs. Really
| easy to get your board to approve a comp increase when
| they know you will do the same for them.
|
| Big business is a social club and you ain't in it.
| samr71 wrote:
| This has elements of truth but is a conspiracy theory the
| way you describe it. If you listen to Musk, or listen to
| people who work for Musk, or the people who work for those
| people, they all say that the point of SpaceX is to enable
| human colonization of Mars. It's not just a marketing
| strategy to acquire talent (unless you think they're all
| lying -- hence the conspiracy aspect.
|
| Now, to do that, they'll need to scratch the government's
| back. Doesn't mean that Mars isn't priority #1.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| The only person that has to lie is Musk. That's why
| SpaceX is run as an autocracy. Everyone else drinks the
| Mars Kool aid. People who have been around a while
| connect the dots.
|
| To be more precise, the company is run by the DoD with
| significant technical and financial assistance. Elon is
| the main conduit between those deep resource and the rest
| of the company. He regularly meets with all teams to
| ensure they are aligned with "higher purposes".
|
| To be even more precise, Elon is a front-man for a right-
| wing multi-decade program in American hegemony and
| actualizing it's crowning achievement--the Strategic
| Defense Initiative.
| xNeil wrote:
| can the internet please decide whether SpaceX is an
| autocracy, or if (as several media outlets put it) Elons
| companies succeeded in spite of him as opposed to because
| of him.
|
| both of these cannot be true at the same time.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > can the internet please decide whether SpaceX is an
| autocracy, or if (as several media outlets put it) Elons
| companies succeeded in spite of him as opposed to because
| of him.
|
| No, the internet isn't a hive mind, and is never going to
| have simple unitary opinions except as rare coincidence.
|
| > both of these cannot be true at the same time.
|
| And yet a planet-scale information network can easily
| include voices that believe each of them simultaneously,
| because people disagree.
| oblio wrote:
| Corporations are basically late stage feudal systems,
| close to absolutist systems, depending on the company
| (see Meta as an extreme example, or most privately held
| companies such as SpaceX or Valve). Everyone gets an ever
| smaller fief from the top boss, but the top boss has a
| lot of power.
| samr71 wrote:
| This can be true AND Mars can be Musk's #1 priority.
|
| Musk wants to build a Mars colony. DOD wants Brilliant
| Pebbles / SDI. Perhaps a trade can be made? You'll need
| much of the same tech for each.
|
| If SpaceX is run by DOD, why is it not run by DOD? Why
| pretend otherwise? The best engineers won't work to build
| SDI? Thousands work for Boeing/Lockheed. They're all that
| much worse?
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Yes, it's _literally a theory about a conspiracy_. That
| doesn 't mean it isn't true. And Elon Musk _saying_ he
| wants to create Mars colonies doesn 't make it true,
| anymore than Howard Hughes _saying_ he wanted to mine
| magnesium nodules off the ocean floor made that true.
|
| Look at Starship objectively. It's not a Mars rocket.
| That bellyflop through the atmosphere stunt won't work on
| Mars, and man-rating it even for operation around Earth
| is extremely dubious. The habitats which would supposedly
| be used for Mars colonization don't exist and aren't in
| development, so if you think Starship is a Mars rocket
| you should realize that it's a bridge to nowhere.
| Starship is being developed to launch tons of satellites
| cheap. It makes a _lot_ of sense for that and it makes
| zero sense for Mars colonization.
|
| Given the weight of the circumstantial evidence,
| particularly the entirety of Michael Griffin's career and
| role in SpaceX's existence, it is more reasonable to
| assume they're lying about Mars than to assume Mars is
| the true motivation. Your prior for Elon Musk lying about
| anything should be through the roof anyway.
| jwells89 wrote:
| > The habitats which would supposedly be used for Mars
| colonization don't exist and aren't in development, so if
| you think Starship is a Mars rocket you should realize
| that it's a bridge to nowhere.
|
| I'm only an enthusiastic layman on the topic of
| spacefaring, but isn't the launch vehicle a critical
| variable when designing habitats for other planets? It
| doesn't seem practical to take anything much further than
| paper until the constraints of your launch vehicle are
| known.
|
| Habitats designed to be launched on Starship+Superheavy
| are going to be wildly different from those made to
| launch on practically anything else because of the vast
| difference in lift capacity and available volume. To add
| to that, it arguably doesn't make sense to develop
| habitats at all unless something similar to Starship is
| flying.
|
| So from that perspective, it would seem to me logical to
| wait and see if SpaceX can actually make
| Starship+Superheavy work or not before committing to
| anything. No point in burning money on something that'll
| never be practical to launch.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| If they don't start serious habitat development until
| Starship is ready, then, Starhip will be decades old by
| the time anybody is ready to make a Mars colony. Besides
| the structure of the habitats themselves, there a ton of
| technology that would need to be developed first. Life
| support equipment and systems, space suits, vehicles, any
| sort of plan to produce food. Nobody is seriously
| developing this stuff, you have a few million dollars
| here and there thrown at university projects but no
| serious investment. It would take a Manhattan Project
| sized commitment, but who would pay for that? Not Elon
| Musk, he says that he assumes other people will. There's
| no money in Mars colonization, it's a pipe dream for
| young dreamers.
|
| > _To add to that, it arguably doesn 't make sense to
| develop habitats at all unless something similar to
| Starship is flying._
|
| It doesn't make sense developing Starship unless you have
| paying customers lined up. Launching satellite
| constellations is a market that actually exists, Mars
| colonization doesn't and won't for decades at least, by
| which time Starship will likely be obsolete anyway.
|
| Furthermore, you're ignoring the part where Starship
| isn't a Mars rocket and doesn't even resemble a Mars
| rocket. If Elon Musk had never spoken of Mars, there
| would be _zero_ reason to suspect that Starship was meant
| to be a Mars rocket. His words alone are the basis for
| this belief. How much are his words actually worth to
| you?
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Can you state what you mean, instead of the innuendo,
| please?
| mcpackieh wrote:
| SDI, obviously. Did you click the link? My innuendo is
| thinner than rice paper, it's a joke to prod you into
| clicking that link. Michael Griffin's entire career
| revolves around kinetic interceptor based SDI, e.g.
| Brilliant Pebbles. The only way to build such a system is
| to develop rocket boosters that let you launch tens of
| thousands of satellites, which is what SpaceX has been
| working towards the entire time.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Yep, Griffin even shared the plenary talks with Musk when
| he gave the famous Mars Society announcement about going to
| Mars,
| https://marspedia.org/images/9/99/2001_TMS_Conv_Sched.pdf
|
| They were very close. Elon named his first born son
| Griffin.
|
| Mike Griffin is all about putting (eventually) hypersonic
| weapons in space and resurrecting Brilliant Pebbles.
|
| He was the early advocate for reusable launchers
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
| srv/national/daily/may99/r... and the Falcon name came from
| his DARPA Falcon Project.
| oblio wrote:
| So, basically a Cold War warhawk.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Elon has been pretty vocal about regretting making Tesla
| public
|
| That's laughable, because without making Tesla public he
| wouldn't be able to live the superstar uber rich lifestyle he
| thinks he deserves. Pretty much everything he has personally
| is owed to Tesla public valuation.
| wenc wrote:
| You missed those years when TSLA was being shorted and when
| it was ok the brink of going under. It's easy to hate but
| going public is two edged sword.
| xNeil wrote:
| what uber rich lifestyle? he owns no mansions, no yachts,
| and i'm not sure he has any super cars. this is a man who
| sleeps at the office on several occasions.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This is marketing. His "home" is a tiny shipping
| container type thing because he actually lives in his
| rich friend's mansion most of the time.
| xNeil wrote:
| I'm sure it is - but sleeping in his friend's mansion is
| most definitely not indicative of Elon needing money to
| fund his 'uber-rich' lifestyle.
|
| You haven't refuted my points of him not owning anything
| indicative of his 'uber-rich' lifestyle, and considering
| the amount of work he is very visibly doing, I see no
| reason to somehow assume he's just laying around buying
| stuff for the heck of it.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Elon had tens of millions of dollars before starting Tesla.
| He risked all of it to start Tesla and SpaceX.
| fourseventy wrote:
| He already had hundreds of millions of dollars before he
| founded Tesla and SpaceX due to the Paypal sale to Ebay....
| chasd00 wrote:
| > superstar uber rich lifestyle
|
| to be fair that lifestyle was enabled for the rest of his
| life in the paypal days. i don't think anything he does now
| is driven by getting a new car or eating at a fancier
| restaurant. He's been able to have as luxurious lifestyle
| as possible for a long time.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| I suspect he actually believes his purpose is to save
| humanity from nuclear war (per Griffin's approach above).
| This is when Elon stopped buying and crashing sports
| cars.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, the way Elon is, no number is high enough. It must
| get bigger. THAT'S the superstar uber rich lifestyle I
| meant, where you are playing the equivalent of an Idle
| Game with Bezos and Gates.
| yedava wrote:
| His wealth is not so much about living a rich lifestyle,
| but about shaping society to his views. His wealth allowed
| him to buy a media megaphone (TwitterX) to further his
| political objectives.
| chasd00 wrote:
| you could open a welding supply store in Brownsville. Any
| investment in Brownsville TX is an investment in SpaceX pretty
| much. That whole area has been transformed.
| paxys wrote:
| If you mean is there a website where you can click some buttons
| and acquire shares then no, it isn't traded on any public
| market.
|
| Some other ways:
|
| - Invest in a company or fund that owns a significant chunk of
| SpaceX (like Google, Bank of America).
|
| - Convince an insider to part with their shares (either
| directly or through one of the secondary marketplaces).
|
| - Get a job at SpaceX.
| justrealist wrote:
| > Get a job at SpaceX
|
| The equity upside at hire # 12,001, when the market cap is
| $150B... is probably not great.
|
| I mean it might be a ton of fun, I just wouldn't do it for
| the 100x returns.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Hold on, they have an evaliation of 150 _billion_ , more
| than 30x the revenue?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 4X Revenue and 25 percent profit margin gets you there.
| Or 8x and a 50% likelihood of getting there. A gamble for
| sure
|
| In my opinion, the more interesting part is the valuation
| in light of no tangible exit strategy.
|
| I wonder what time frame investors are looking at in
| order to realize their gains.
| bell-cot wrote:
| The current P/E ratio for the S&P 500 (growing far more
| slowly, obviously) is ~25.
|
| By many historical metrics, the stock markets are
| _insanely_ overvalued these days. Far too much cash in
| the system, bidding up the "values" of anything that
| remotely resembles an investment.
| justapassenger wrote:
| P/E is price to earnings, not revenue.
|
| SpaceX is insanely overvalued.
| edgyquant wrote:
| That's debatable when they have a huge majority of launch
| market share at this point.
| justapassenger wrote:
| They have huge majority of market that's much smaller
| than their valuation, and isn't growing anywhere close at
| the pace they predicted (if they didn't burn their own
| money to lunch hundreds of starlinks, their growth in
| launches would be pretty flat).
|
| But anyway, op used P/E ratio to justify spacex
| valuation, in a totally wrong way. Their P/E ratio is in
| thousands (assuming there's no creative accounting to
| show that profit, as they have many money burning
| projects and keep on raising billions). And they own a
| lot of the market and market itself isn't growing fast.
|
| You can justify their valuation with lofty goals and
| mission, if that's your thing. But not with financial
| numbers and market sizes.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Some amount of the value baked-in assumes that SpaceX
| will earn money on any of the thousands of revenue
| sources possible in the creation and running of the first
| large-scale city on Mars.
|
| Maybe you think it isn't going to happen - and sure there
| is some risk (!) - but in the successful case, SpaceX
| should be worth many trillions. At least.
| justapassenger wrote:
| It's amazing that after hacker community got to see how
| full of shit guy making those promises is, with Twitter,
| some still believe that in other areas he's not lying.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > By many historical metrics, the stock markets are
| insanely overvalued these days. Far too much cash in the
| system, bidding up the "values" of anything that remotely
| resembles an investment.
|
| Right. This is the same stock market that at one point
| said Tesla was worth more than every other car
| manufacturer. Combined.
|
| Worth more than: Toyota, Volkwagen Group, Hyundai/Kia,
| General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Honda, Fiat Chrysler,
| Renault, Suzuki, Daimler, BMW, Mazda and Mitsubishi.
| _Combined_. (Plus several Chinese manufacturers: SAID,
| Geely, Changan, Dongfeng).
| justrealist wrote:
| That's pretty modest for a company with 100% y/y growth
| on revenue already in the billions.
| orwin wrote:
| They can only capture the demand for orbital launch. The
| Russia aggression in 2022 helped a lot, as SpaceX took
| 'free' market share, and their superior (or rather,
| inferior) costs gave them the majority of commercial
| launches from every country except Russia/China, and they
| will also probably get most Nasa and US allies (except
| EU) launches.
|
| I'll say they will cap at 8-10B revenue (+inflation).
|
| But this year, SpaceX will
| justrealist wrote:
| Using the market size at $2700/kg to LEO to size the
| market is ridiculous when they are working on trying to
| get it to $100/kg to LEO.
|
| If the only launch vehicle was the SLS, the market size
| would be $0. That's not meaningful!
| hef19898 wrote:
| Assuming rocket launch demand continues to grow
| exponentially, which I kind of doubt. Also, I'd love to
| see how Starlink is accounted for.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Assuming rocket launch demand continues to grow
| exponentially
|
| The issue here is the market doesn't know where we are on
| the S curve. If we've looking at space shuttle prices, we
| are at the end of the curve. If SpaceX pulls off
| reusability with the starship, then I'm going to make
| guesses we are much lower on the curve then most expect.
|
| If they can get 'cheap' launches of 100-200T to orbit
| then a massive number of new possibilities open up and
| SpaceX won't sit around as just a cheap transport
| monopoly, they expand horizontally into other space based
| markets.
| Vecr wrote:
| Not if the Space Development Agency and SDI have anything
| to say about it, though I actually doubt they will get
| funding.
| reso wrote:
| Isn't most of this Starlink, which is basically SpaceX self-
| dealing? Can someone point me to a breakdown of launches and
| customers?
| wmf wrote:
| I don't think they can book Starlink launches as revenue. Of
| course Starlink has >$1B of legitimate subscriber revenue.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
| pixl97 wrote:
| https://spaceexplored.com/2023/08/11/spacex-launches-2023/
|
| It appears somewhere around 60-70% of the launches are their
| own missions. This said nothing about costs though.
|
| Still one company matching the rocket launches of the rest of
| the world is pretty impressive.
| anarchogeek wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Leary wrote:
| Its revenue will almost double again this year (2023) by looking
| at the number of launches[1]. Definitely the most exciting
| company Elon has (personal opinion)
|
| [1] https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#launchhistory-per-year
| losteric wrote:
| Gwynne Shotwell deserves all the thanks, she's brilliant
| tomp wrote:
| I mean, not _all_ the credit.
|
| She might be brilliant, but she's worked other space jobs
| before. So clearly whatever company Musk has created, has
| allowed her to actually showcase her brilliance.
|
| CEO sets the vision. Without vision, even perfect execution
| is pointless.
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| "clearly" is doing so much heavy lifting for you it puts
| both starship and sls to shame...
|
| If you have evidence to support that takeaway I'd love to
| see it. I don't have evidence one way or the other, though
| I have seen unconfirmed scuttlebutt that SpaceX is
| successful _despite_ Musk, in no small part due to actively
| distracting and babysitting him to prevent him from
| meddling
| mufti_menk wrote:
| Elon could have quit after cashing out paypal but instead
| took risks with SpaceX and Tesla, people like you still
| cope and act like he had no hand in his own success.
| pavon wrote:
| Many of those planned commercial launches will likely slip into
| 2024. It is common for space companies to not bother updating
| deadlines that they obviously are not going to meet until they
| get past some high-risk milestone and are in a better position
| to give a more realistic deadline.
| why_at wrote:
| Interesting site, but it's not clear to me what they count as a
| failed launch. My guess is some of the Starship tests since I
| don't think there has been a failed Falcon 9 launch is a few
| years.
|
| Also, unrelated: This site is the worst case of hijacking the
| browser back button I've ever seen
| more_corn wrote:
| I mean twit-er-x is exciting, just in a more train wreck sort
| of way.
| bilekas wrote:
| Yeah.. it's a strange guilty pleasure to see all the changes
| i view as stupid, to perform as badly in the real world.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| Most of the changes seem to be great to me. Long form
| video. Longer posts. Revenue sharing.
|
| Great changes so far
| Un1corn wrote:
| I think most people focus on bringing back far-right
| people to the platform, making the application
| inaccessible to logged out users and the failed attempts
| at Twitter Premium or whatever it's being called.
| fourseventy wrote:
| So far-right people shouldn't be allowed on the platform
| but far-left people are? Elon simply balanced the
| conversation.
| xNeil wrote:
| i remember i think back when jack dorsey stepped down and
| parag agrawal was slated to be the next ceo all of HN was
| doing nothing but talking about how the only viable path
| for twitter was to put the entire thing behind a
| subscription because there was too much garbage.
|
| now that elon is actually instating a paywall (that isn't
| compulsory, and still lets you use it for free) all of HN
| seems to be thinking it's the wrong decision.
|
| i'd understand if something substantially happened in the
| intervening time period to give you the impression the
| subscription model was NOT the way to go, but nothing of
| the sorts has actually happened at all.
|
| while it's better than most sites, the groupthink on HN
| is insane.
|
| also - i might be wrong if dorsey stepping down was the
| time when everyone was saying this, but i do remember it
| very clearly, and i only joined in 2020.
| colinsane wrote:
| for me it's the vocal Twitter users who say with a
| straight face that it's the "town square" and who talk
| about "the global conversation" and just won't accept
| that only a vast minority of their town or globe actually
| post on it or participate in the way they're suggesting.
|
| the whole platform -- users and owners -- are just
| incredibly full of themselves in an _annoying_ way.
| [deleted]
| m3kw9 wrote:
| There is some fantasy world going on with Elon haters, it's
| comical. Twitter works fine, SpaceX works fine
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| I think we should nickname it (e)x-Twitter.
| bmitc wrote:
| Are there reporting requirements that separate actual revenue, my
| term for revenue from private parties, and revenue from
| government grants and contracts? What is the percentage of
| SpaceX's "revenue" that comes from government grants and
| contracts?
| wmf wrote:
| SpaceX has billions worth of government contracts but why do
| you ask? Remember that SpaceX is charging the government lower
| prices than its competitors...
| bmitc wrote:
| I'm just asking to know.
| [deleted]
| quest88 wrote:
| Did their profits increase? Elon claimed reusable rockets would
| be orders of magnitude cheaper. Is that statement true?
| DennisP wrote:
| They don't have fully reusable rockets in production yet. They
| just reuse the first stage. Even with that alone, they are the
| cheapest launch provider by a significant margin, which is why
| they've captured such a large share of the market.
|
| At this point it seems pretty plausible that if they succeed in
| making a whole rocket reusable at a decent cadence, instead of
| throwing away an upper stage with each launch, then costs will
| drop dramatically.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| Thier losses decreased so yes. They are launching at an
| unbelievably cheap price compared to anyone else on the planet.
|
| They are still heavily investing in starship and starling
| though so that is a large pot of why they are running at a loss
| [deleted]
| leto_ii wrote:
| Did wsj wisen up to our archive.today trick?
| seatac76 wrote:
| Yeah they did hasn't been working today.
| pavon wrote:
| Here is a shorter Reuters article on the subject for those
| without a WSJ subscription:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/elon-musks-spacex-turns-pro...
| josefresco wrote:
| Yandex has it (link in my other comment)
| enjoytheview wrote:
| I'm using an extension called "Bypass Paywalls Clean", haven't
| updated it in a very longe while and it still works, looks like
| the current versions is here:
| https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
| az226 wrote:
| Gifting an unlocked article: https://www.wsj.com/tech/behind-
| the-curtain-of-elon-musks-se...
| skyyler wrote:
| Guess I won't be reading their articles anymore.
| hallqv wrote:
| Incredible to double revenue YoY on that level. Elon and Spacex
| team are truly extraordinary.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Half of hacker news thinks Elon is some random evil idiot who
| is got really lucky twice.
| Dig1t wrote:
| 3 times if you count zip2, his first company, from which he
| netted $22M.
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| You mean the guy that spacex has a created a dedicated
| handler team for to keep him from interfering with their
| work?
| misiti3780 wrote:
| go away.
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