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SpaceX not the behemoth everyone thought
- ryandamm 5mo agoDid people really believe this was a financial behemoth? Or was this just a larger bet on the conglomerate that is Musk’s quasi-meme-stock empire?
- marsten 5mo agoA lot of people believe in Musk and will invest in anything he wants to do. Is this rational? It depends on how it plays out. I think we may be seeing a new type of capitalism that maybe Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet hinted at: A business empire built around the outsized ambitions of a single charismatic individual. The valuations of Tesla and SpaceX only make sense if you attach an enormous premium to Musk the individual.
- chneu 5mo agoWe have seen that with people like howard hughes and some of the older families.
- josefritzishere 5mo agoI hate semantic arguments but have a thought. I don't think "charismatic" is the right word. Musk is more vilified than celebrated. He's like a human traffic accident, an amoral black hole of social media attention. I am not sure the English language has a word for this.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- tim333 5mo agoWorld's largest satellite launch business and satellite communications network. There's definitely business there but it seems a bit overpriced.
- vladsiu 5mo ago[dead]
- unsignedchad 5mo ago[dead]
- marcosdumay 5mo agoHum... I've been out of stocks for a long while... Is a price to sales ratio of 100 anything near normal nowadays? EDIT: Wow, that was easy to find out. Turns out that didn't explode with the everything bubble, and almost no industry in the S&P 500 has an average above 5, the highest being a bit over 8.
- branko_d 5mo agoNo. Palantir, possibly the most overvalued company on the stock marker, has P/S 63 and P/E 144. Nvidia has P/S 21 and P/E 33.
- riffraff 5mo agoTesla has a P/E of 383, I think? Of course, it shares the same reality distortion field. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/
- marcosdumay 5mo agoAnd a P/S of 15, according to that link. This 100 is really an outlier.
- marsten 5mo agoSecond-highest P/E is Tesla, currently at 97. Apart from Palantir and Tesla, the other big companies are trading at what would historically be considered reasonable P/Es given their growth rates and profitability. What's really changed in the last 20-30 years is the incredible profit generated by the tech industry, and the defensive moats the biggest companies have built.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- bandrami 5mo agoSometime about 20 years ago we all got used to the idea of companies not having to actually make money on their business operations and I worry the bill for this is coming due soon
- weakened_malloc 5mo agoIt's been that way for a loooooong time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
- edelbitter 5mo agoIs that not the commonly cited example for commodity trading, whereas meaningful comparison of fundamentals to market capitalization only started much later?
- weakened_malloc 5mo agoThe idea is broadly similar, but I guess here's another example with a company this time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Bubble_of_1769 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Bubble_of_1769 The point is that I don't think irrational exuberance in stocks is a recent thing.
- rsynnott 5mo agoOh, they had those too back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company
- riffraff 5mo agoIt would appear that the relative tax inefficiency of dividends over buy backs (and lack of wealth taxes) has fundamentally messed up the business world. Alas, I don't see that likely to change.
- bandrami 5mo agoAlong with the "borrow tax-free against unrealized equities gains" hack.
- lokar 5mo agoHas anyone seen a detailed analysis of the starlink business that includes the cost to re-launch sats as they burn up?
- nomilk 5mo agotl;dr > It's expected to be the largest IPO ever...but the prospectus shows just how much the IPO depends on expectations for future growth Same goes for every IPO. One point of difference about SpaceX is those involved do have a track record for delivery.
- senectus1 5mo agoDont forget that buying in on spaceX IPO is really just buying in on XAI/ X/Twitter and starlink. The "rocket ship" company is a very small part of SapceX. and tbh.. most of the buyers of spaceX are really just going to be 401k investments....
- ben_w 5mo agoX and xAI are also bad investments. Starlink is plausibly this valuable, but only if China doesn't clone all the parts and sell the same idea to much of the world, at a minimum forcing down margins and possibly undercutting entirely.
- ChrisArchitect 5mo agoDiscussion: SpaceX S-1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213933 Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214017
- SilverElfin 5mo agoSo this entire scam is just dumping on retail investors and forcing everyone to prop up a weak company through our 401ks. There should be jail time for people involved.
- josefritzishere 5mo agoThis is such an obvious pump and dump scam.