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The other day I was thinking: "if Musk disappears tomorrow would the valuation still be in the same ballpark?". I don't think so at all. In this context, it fee
by pandoro 4mo ago
The other day I was thinking: "if Musk disappears tomorrow would the valuation still be in the same ballpark?". I don't think so at all. In this context, it feels like even 150 Billions would be a big stretch considering revenue and forecasts. The coming IPOs and numbers are completely detached from reality and we are all in for a crash that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.
- moate 4mo ago"If the guy with insider access to the Kleptocracy left would this thing be as valuable" is a resounding NO when you're selling exploding space ships and a 3rd tier AI, a service that consumers continue to find complicated at best.
- altcognito 4mo agoSpaceX sells starlink. That's probably the most valuable part of SpaceX by far based on recurring revenue. While they've made spaceflight reasonably cheap and reliable for a particular category of payloads - clearly there wasn't phantom demand just waiting to be launched. Given the IPO, I suspect they're hitting the wall with regards to new starlink signups, and SpaceX is done growing. SpaceX has $6.6B adjusted EBITDA, which, at a premium multiplier would probably put it somewhere around 80-150 billion as a company.
- guidedlight 4mo agoThere are competitors to Starlink arriving now. For example, the Australian government has selected Project Kepler (now called Amazon Leo) to provide broadband services to the Australian Outback. https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-statements/nbn-co-selects-amazons-project-kuiper https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/... And geopolitical shenanigans in Ukraine with Musk and Starlink means that it may not be a reliable partner.
- AdamJacobMuller 4mo agoAnd LEO is using SpaceX to launch. SpaceX was launching a modest % of the LEO constellation but after the Blue Origin failure, SpaceX is the only launch provider who can fill that gap and actually let LEO deliver on contracted time. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm no Musk sycophant though I do love SpaceX and Starlink. I want us to have multiple providers of super cheap space launch capabilities and multiple diverse LEO satellite constellations (3-4 on a global scale makes sense I think?). I'm sure BlueOrigin will get there some day and I'm sure LEO will get there too (maybe even in the 2028 window if they expand their SpaceX launch partnership).
- g8oz 4mo agoI for one am sure that BlueOrigin will never get there.
- AdamJacobMuller 4mo agoI hope you are wrong, or at least that someone else does it. I'm very happy for SpaceX's success but a monopoly on space launch capacity benefits nobody, SpaceX included.
- jampa 4mo agoThe biggest competitor to Starlink is, ironically, traditional fiber. When COVID hit, I knew a lot of engineers who decided to move to rural areas / small farms, because they could leverage Starlink to work remotely. Last year, when I asked whether they still liked Starlink, all of them said it was amazing, but they had gotten fiber coverage in their area from a local provider, so they don't use it anymore, or just use it as a backup. I think Starlink was a huge demand signal that there were people willing to pay a premium for faster-than-radio internet. So, unless they manage to be cheaper and faster than fiber, I don't think there is much of an endgame there.
- Recurecur 4mo agoStarlink isn’t for areas served by fiber, it’s for areas that do not have have good Internet access available, which are far larger than the area served by fiber.
- vikingtreadmill 4mo ago[flagged]
- shpx 4mo ago> The Falcon 9 has [...] 641 successful launches, 2 in-flight failures, 1 partial failure and 1 pre-flight destruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9 > Falcon 9 first-stage boosters have been landed and recovered 616 times out of 629 attempts, including synchronized recoveries of the side-boosters of most Falcon Heavy flights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b... 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...
- nonethewiser 4mo ago>I don't think so at all. In this context, it feels like even 150 Billions would be a big stretch considering revenue and forecasts. How are you valuating SpaceX?
- remus 4mo agoNot at >100x revenue, presumably.
- pandoro 4mo agoTheir launch business has a dominant market position but is not run for profit and xAI is loosing money. Starlink is the only segment earning real money: $7.2 billion in adjusted EBITDA. So 150 Billions seems "realistic" when taking Musk out of the equation. Maybe 150 to 250 billions would be better as a range if you want to be really optimistic.
- ryandvm 4mo agoWild that the guy whose decisions are directly responsible for driving profitability into the ground is somehow the reason these companies have 300+ PE valuations.
- minraws 4mo agoProves the point that skills don't matter results do, if a monkey manages to make better milkshake and you fire the chef, you didn't really improve the kitchen. But that's what we do in stock and markets and well whatever we are living through, sometimes bad decisions can have good results because you were right place right time. if it happens more than once, that doesn't mean it was incredible it just means the bias works. If 1% of the innovators had access to levels of cheap capital Musk has had, we might be living in a different reality. SamAltman for all his faults brought trillion dollar NLP systems to reality by sheer ability to raise capital. Everyone believes if things go south Musk can raise another Trillion somehow. And honestly I wouldn't bet against the guy.
- 8ytecoder 4mo agoSkills do matter. It’s just a different type of skill. Merit doesn’t matter - but even that’s a bit arguable - if the merit is decided based on what someone is creating value for their shareholders and value is entirely defined by stock price, it seems to be working well too. (Not that I agree this is right)
- cogman10 4mo agoThis all assumes there was some skill involved. Instead, this along with gamestop and a few other meme stocks are showing that the stock market simply isn't as rational as finance experts have wanted to pretend. This is a bitcoin stock market. Things are valued entirely based on what others are willing to buy for. They are not valued based on any attribute of the underlying asset. Exactly like bitcoin, it's whim and whimsy which is driving prices. It's group gambling at this point. Everyone is betting that there won't be a run on the market.
- 4mo ago
- duxup 4mo agoIt seems like a suicide pact for the companies like Tesla and Musk ... they need each other and then things get worse ...
- mcmoor 4mo agoElon Musk seems like an ultimate counterexample of a person that "deserves" his dozens of billions of dollars. Because his name alone for some reason raises the percepted value of a company by that much amount. No amount of one person's or even dozens' hard labour will be able to match this. Of course it may come crashing anytime and Ponzi also had a similar kind of "productivity", but it really shows that not all labours are equal.
- Zigurd 4mo agoIt's also the boys who never grew out of cheesy science fiction. Elon became their cult leader. Together they turned both Tesla and SpaceX into meme stocks. Meme stocks are amusing when they just mess with finance bros. But we've let the game get out of control.