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A look into the finances of SpaceX
- stephenitis 3y agoIs there a way for a mortal to buy or invest into SpaceX or are we just waiting for an IPO eventually?
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- Laremere 3y agoGo 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.
- mcpackieh 3y agoTalk 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
- didibus 3y ago> 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 3y agoIt'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.)
- panick21_ 3y agoOk mister smarty pants. How do you create a program for Mars colonialisation without first solving the problem of price to LEO launches. You act as if there was some short cut around that. There isnt. So your argument just fundamentally doesnt work. What would SpaceX invest in refueling if LEO is all they cared about?
- mrguyorama 3y ago>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.
- bob1029 3y ago> 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 3y agoThat 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 3y agoWhat 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.
- mrguyorama 3y ago>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 3y agoYou 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.
- chasd00 3y ago> 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoNo, 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.
- HWR_14 3y agoCars and restaurants aren't "Uber rich" lifestyle. Buying Twitter to make sure he can control how viral his tweets are is an "Uber rich" move. PayPal's money wouldn't even be enough to get him a sports team.
- xNeil 3y agowhat 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.
- Panzer04 3y agoMaking 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)
- inemesitaffia 3y agoShares aren't cash for the company itself. For the owners, yes
- paxys 3y agoIf 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 3y ago> 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 3y agoHold on, they have an evaliation of 150 billion, more than 30x the revenue?
- justrealist 3y agoThat's pretty modest for a company with 100% y/y growth on revenue already in the billions.
- hef19898 3y agoAssuming rocket launch demand continues to grow exponentially, which I kind of doubt. Also, I'd love to see how Starlink is accounted for.
- pixl97 3y ago>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.
- martythemaniak 3y agoAccredited 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.
- MR4D 3y agoSpaceX 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/ https://privatesharesfund.com/portfolio/
- jacquesm 3y agoDoes 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?
- imkevinxu 3y agoIt's available on https://sandhillmarkets.com/ https://sandhillmarkets.com/
- more_corn 3y agoThere is a secondary market for privately held shares.
- chasd00 3y agoyou 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.
- IshKebab 3y agoThere's no point investing in it now. Everyone knows they are doing amazingly well and are hugely valuable. It's not a secret.
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- leto_ii 3y agoDid wsj wisen up to our archive.today trick?
- skyyler 3y agoGuess I won't be reading their articles anymore.
- seatac76 3y agoYeah they did hasn’t been working today.
- pavon 3y agoHere is a shorter Reuters article on the subject for those without a WSJ subscription: https://www.reuters.com/business/elon-musks-spacex-turns-profit-first-quarter-revenue-soars-wsj-2023-08-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/elon-musks-spacex-turns-pro...
- enjoytheview 3y agoI'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 https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
- az226 3y agoGifting an unlocked article: https://www.wsj.com/tech/behind-the-curtain-of-elon-musks-secretive-spacex-revenue-growth-and-rising-costs-2c828e2b?st=y6m3lmorxxd48bw https://www.wsj.com/tech/behind-the-curtain-of-elon-musks-se...
- SandraBucky 3y agothanks
- josefresco 3y agoYandex has it (link in my other comment)
- oldgradstudent 3y agoHow are Starlink launches accounted for? Are they considered revenue? Capex? Expenses? I guess it depends on the exact corporate structure.
- justrealist 3y agoI can't imagine any reasonable way to book it as revenue.
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoProbably cap ex which means they can use depreciation to improve their bottom line numbers.
- loandbehold 3y agoWouldn't depreciation reduce their bottom line as opposed to improve it?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- foota 3y agoDepreciation happens over several years, whereas other expenses are immediate, right?
- loandbehold 3y agooh i see what you are saying. so depreciation vs expensing all at once.
- foota 3y agoIt'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 3y agoIs there a breakdown of where the money came from? How much is coming from Starlink, and how much money are they losing?
- pavon 3y agoThose 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 3y ago[deleted]
- pixl97 3y agoWhen 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).
- Leary 3y agoIts 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 https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#launchhistory-per-year
- more_corn 3y agoI mean twit-er-x is exciting, just in a more train wreck sort of way.
- oblio 3y agoI think we should nickname it (e)x-Twitter.
- bilekas 3y agoYeah.. it's a strange guilty pleasure to see all the changes i view as stupid, to perform as badly in the real world.
- DoesntMatter22 3y agoMost of the changes seem to be great to me. Long form video. Longer posts. Revenue sharing. Great changes so far
- Un1corn 3y agoI 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.
- xNeil 3y agoi 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.
- quest88 3y agoDid their profits increase? Elon claimed reusable rockets would be orders of magnitude cheaper. Is that statement true?
- DennisP 3y agoThey 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 3y agoThier 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
- bell-cot 3y agoFrom 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.
- cypress66 3y agoFalcon 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 3y agoA rational return to the moon program that had to choose between Falcon and SLS would choose Falcon.
- stetrain 3y agoIf 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 3y ago> 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 3y agoIt 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.
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- hallqv 3y agoIncredible to double revenue YoY on that level. Elon and Spacex team are truly extraordinary.
- misiti3780 3y agoHalf of hacker news thinks Elon is some random evil idiot who is got really lucky twice.
- ancientworldnow 3y agoYou mean the guy that spacex has a created a dedicated handler team for to keep him from interfering with their work?
- misiti3780 3y agogo away.
- Uzza 3y agoThe only source for that is a single blog post on tumblr, with zero actual proof of anything stated in it. It's gossip at best.
- Dig1t 3y ago3 times if you count zip2, his first company, from which he netted $22M.
- misiti3780 3y agoyou're right. three times
- hallqv 3y agoIt’s actually four times; zip2, PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX
- hallqv 3y ago
- reso 3y agoIsn't most of this Starlink, which is basically SpaceX self-dealing? Can someone point me to a breakdown of launches and customers?
- wmf 3y agoI 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_Heavy_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
- reso 3y agoI suspect that SpaceX is booking Starlink launches as revenue. My basis for this is that their launch revenue is growing much faster than their non-starlink launch schedule. We can't prove or disprove this though, since their financials are secret.
- TMWNN 3y ago> since their financials are secret Why do you keep making comments like this in this post, when the whole point of the post is that the WSJ's reporters have viewed (and have written about) confidential SpaceX internal financials? I mean, really.
- reso 3y agoSpaceX's detailed financials are secret. This is a simple fact. As a privately held corp they have few disclosure obligations. What they do disclose is usually what they want to disclose. There is no comparison between the detailed, auditable financials that we have for a project like SLS, and the one or two headline numbers that SpaceX has told us about something like Falcon 9.
- TMWNN 3y ago>There is no comparison between the detailed, auditable financials that we have for a project like SLS, and the one or two headline numbers that SpaceX has told us about something like Falcon 9. No one is claiming otherwise, which is why the WSJ article based on said confidential internal SpaceX financials is so interesting. As others keep telling you, what matters to NASA, DOD, and other SpaceX customers is what they pay per launch, not how much SpaceX's costs are per launch. Obviously, if a launch cost DOD $50 million but it cost SpaceX 9000 megazillion dollars, there would be some concern on the customer's side about whether such a launch could be purchasable again later, but a) we've had many, many dozens of launches that SpaceX has successfully pulled off, so the internal cost per launch for SpaceX can't be that many megazillion dollars. b) According to the WSJ article, SpaceX has achieved profitability as of this year, so we can now be fairly sure that the cost is, in fact, less than $50 million per launch. Your statement that SpaceX may be booking Starlink launches as revenue is irrelevant. Hollywood accounting works because a film studio can, by shifting expenses to a particular film from elsewhere in the company, always claim that the film is unprofitable; the overall revenue and profit/loss for the studio is unaffected. The documents WSJ viewed are for SpaceX as a whole, not "SpaceX's launcher division". Even if the launcher division charged the Starlink division 9000 megazillion dollars per launch, that would be exactly balanced by the Starlink division having to book 9000 megazillion dollars of expense per launch. Again, according to the documents WSJ viewed, SpaceX overall has achieved profitability. That's a major accomplishment given it being by far the lowest-cost launch provider in the world.
- htss2013 3y agoIsn'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.
- misiti3780 3y agoTesla 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 3y agoTesla 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 3y agoThis 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 3y ago> > 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.
- bmitc 3y agoAre 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?
- entropicgravity 3y agoDon'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.
- NovaDudely 3y agoBingo! Now that they are a key part of the industrial complex, good money can be thrown at bad and it will all still work out. Not saying that is what they are doing but they are now in a key position that big mistakes are not necessarily fatal to the company.
- archo 3y agohttps://archive.is/e0bnu https://archive.is/e0bnu
- 7e 3y agoElon's MO has always been to lose more money than competitors are willing to, then brag about how advanced they are compared to everyone else. New technologies are always unprofitable. There is no magic to what SpaceX has done, or is doing. Only a willingness to grift, sell, and spend. Losing money makes everything easy. Competitors don’t play that game.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoDefinitely Orwell. Profits are indeed unprofitable