Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 73 posts

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#61

Post by bigbadfeline »

mandevil wrote: post #36
verzali wrote: post #9

Curious that Tesla stock fell in price at the moment of the Starship abort. For what possible reason would a failed rocket launch affect the fortunes of an electric car company?

There are rumors that the next step is a TSLA-SPCX merger. Each company has something that Elon wants but is hard to get: Elon has super-voting controlling shares of SPCX, but TSLA is part of the S&P500. Once a company is listed, exchange rules prohibit adding super-voting shares, it has to be done prior to listing. In order to qualify for the S&P500 a company has to have a large enough market cap and be net profitab…

> (A) TSLA recently rechartered in Texas, which makes it very hard for shareholders to sue. (B) Presumably most of the TSLA shareholders today like Elon Musk.

If (B) was true before (A) happened, it's very likely it changed after that.

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#62

Post by oblio »

xnx wrote: post #60

My hope is that the scales will fall from people's eyes in relation to SpaceX and this newfound knowledge will also transfer to Tesla's overvaluation.

Tesla will fall once they start going more into the red when:

* their products are recalled (just as for "legacy" manufacturers, because making cars is hard)

* Chinese brands take over every market where they're not outright banned

* FSD doesn't materialize because it's a decades long project that requires more types of hardware than just simple cameras

* robotaxis can't be rolled out because of no FSD and no approvals

* the robots go nowhere for decades

Basically, it turns out that despite the desperation, Tesla will slowly turn into a boring car manufacturer with just 2 car models for sale.

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#63

Post by oblio »

FloorEgg wrote: post #59
lukeschlather wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX's annual revenue is estimated at $40B for 2026. A comparison might be Lockheed Martin, with annual revenue of $75B in 2025, and a market cap of $120B. So I wouldn't say $200B sounds low at all, even if their revenue doubles (twice, since $40B is actually a projection where they were doing $20B last year, though it's apples and oranges with the acquisition of Musk's failing companies.)

Comparing revenue, without at least also comparing revenue growth rates and leverage ratios is really nonsense financial analysis. It was the same thing with Tesla. Everyone screaming when Tesla had. $20bn market cap how they were extremely over valued because their car sales revenue paled in comparison to the other car manufacturers and yet their market cap was in the same ballpark. It was such a joke and so obvious…

Tesla car sales peaked in 2023 and have declined since. They've retired the models S, X, and the CyberCab is barely selling.

Tesla also peaked at about 15% of Toyota sales. Tesla profit margins are now comparable to regular car manufacturers. Robots are a pipe dream. Robotaxis are a decade into the future as a meaningful business.

How exactly does Tesla's market cap make any sense?

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#64

Post by Freedom2 »

notahacker wrote: post #55
throwaway13337 wrote: post #37

Are there any reasonable analyses of the practicality of data centers in space? I know Dwarkesh Patel was interviewing Elon and brought up the fact that power cost for data centers is only 20%. The number I could find is 7-18%? GPUs are the majority of the cost. I don't think Elon responded directly to that. There's the argument that licensing to build these things is cheaper in space. But earth has a lot of space in…

This has been done on HN a few times. The heat dissipation argument is a solved problem with known physics, it's just that pointing out the inefficiency of radiative cooling is the correct response to the daft claim that "space is cold" (the solution is "launch lots of additional mass into space every 5 years" which isn't exactly cheap). Though that claim is still better than Elon trying to tell idiots that SpaceX's…

Elon has mentioned before that he intends to place AI-powered factories in space that will manufacture and install new chips, while recycling the older ones. He says it's going to be fully self-sufficient.

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#65

Post by FloorEgg »

oblio wrote: post #63
FloorEgg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing revenue, without at least also comparing revenue growth rates and leverage ratios is really nonsense financial analysis. It was the same thing with Tesla. Everyone screaming when Tesla had. $20bn market cap how they were extremely over valued because their car sales revenue paled in comparison to the other car manufacturers and yet their market cap was in the same ballpark. It was such a joke and so obvious…

Tesla car sales peaked in 2023 and have declined since. They've retired the models S, X, and the CyberCab is barely selling. Tesla also peaked at about 15% of Toyota sales. Tesla profit margins are now comparable to regular car manufacturers. Robots are a pipe dream. Robotaxis are a decade into the future as a meaningful business. How exactly does Tesla's market cap make any sense?

Everything you said sounds about right to me.

The point I was making was based on a reference to their market cap when it was $20bn in 2018. At the time there was overwhelming and biased negative sentiment about how it was over-valued at the time that wasn't based on a sound analysis.

Funny enough, I think the answer to your question may be in what happened back then.

In 2018 Tesla had a dominant technological advantage in EVs and a strong brand. There was overwhelming anti-tesla investment propaganda, and history's largest short position against them. When a company is over-shorted and then increases in intrinsic value instead of going bankrupt, those shorts covering will put further upwards pressure on the share price. So for at least a while, maybe a long while, the company will be over valued to correct for the previous over-shorting.

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#66

Post by lukeschlather »

FloorEgg wrote: post #59
lukeschlather wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX's annual revenue is estimated at $40B for 2026. A comparison might be Lockheed Martin, with annual revenue of $75B in 2025, and a market cap of $120B. So I wouldn't say $200B sounds low at all, even if their revenue doubles (twice, since $40B is actually a projection where they were doing $20B last year, though it's apples and oranges with the acquisition of Musk's failing companies.)

Comparing revenue, without at least also comparing revenue growth rates and leverage ratios is really nonsense financial analysis. It was the same thing with Tesla. Everyone screaming when Tesla had. $20bn market cap how they were extremely over valued because their car sales revenue paled in comparison to the other car manufacturers and yet their market cap was in the same ballpark. It was such a joke and so obvious…

I think Lockheed Martin is less leveraged than either SpaceX or Tesla. Also SpaceX just folded in several of Musk's companies that seemed questionably solvent. I really have zero clue how to value the resulting mess of liabilities and highly questionable revenue streams mixed with very solid ones, but $200B doesn't sound unreasonable. $1.6T sounds very high. My intention behind comparing to Lockheed Martin was to presume revenue would double for two consecutive years, which I viewed as reasonably charitable.

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#67

Post by [deleted] »

notahacker wrote: post #55
throwaway13337 wrote: post #37

Are there any reasonable analyses of the practicality of data centers in space? I know Dwarkesh Patel was interviewing Elon and brought up the fact that power cost for data centers is only 20%. The number I could find is 7-18%? GPUs are the majority of the cost. I don't think Elon responded directly to that. There's the argument that licensing to build these things is cheaper in space. But earth has a lot of space in…

This has been done on HN a few times. The heat dissipation argument is a solved problem with known physics, it's just that pointing out the inefficiency of radiative cooling is the correct response to the daft claim that "space is cold" (the solution is "launch lots of additional mass into space every 5 years" which isn't exactly cheap). Though that claim is still better than Elon trying to tell idiots that SpaceX's…

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#68

Post by mingus88 »

Freedom2 wrote: post #64
notahacker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been done on HN a few times. The heat dissipation argument is a solved problem with known physics, it's just that pointing out the inefficiency of radiative cooling is the correct response to the daft claim that "space is cold" (the solution is "launch lots of additional mass into space every 5 years" which isn't exactly cheap). Though that claim is still better than Elon trying to tell idiots that SpaceX's…

Elon has mentioned before that he intends to place AI-powered factories in space that will manufacture and install new chips, while recycling the older ones. He says it's going to be fully self-sufficient.

Haha sure.

He also said that cybertrucks would be deployed to Mars, it would be amphibious and bulletproof, people buying Teslas would make money turning them into to self driving taxis, and charged people for FSD in 2016.

If you believe anything he says, maybe you should get in on this spaceX stock deal!

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#69

Post by beAbU »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #37

Are there any reasonable analyses of the practicality of data centers in space? I know Dwarkesh Patel was interviewing Elon and brought up the fact that power cost for data centers is only 20%. The number I could find is 7-18%? GPUs are the majority of the cost. I don't think Elon responded directly to that. There's the argument that licensing to build these things is cheaper in space. But earth has a lot of space in…

No need for any technical analysis. Space-based DC's claim solve one problem: backlash and resistance against construction from local communities.

Yet, the DCs here on earth have other problems such as high energy consumption needing on-prem gas turbines and requiring large quantities of water for cooling requirements.

I'm looking forward to a terrestrial DC that solves all these issues: it's completely self contained and self sustaining requiring very little maintenance, no external power and self contained waterless cooling. Once we have that then we can ask how we can package up this building and put it in the sea. And then when we've had enough of that, we can put them in space.

Re: SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

#70

Post by notahacker »

Freedom2 wrote: post #64
notahacker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been done on HN a few times. The heat dissipation argument is a solved problem with known physics, it's just that pointing out the inefficiency of radiative cooling is the correct response to the daft claim that "space is cold" (the solution is "launch lots of additional mass into space every 5 years" which isn't exactly cheap). Though that claim is still better than Elon trying to tell idiots that SpaceX's…

Elon has mentioned before that he intends to place AI-powered factories in space that will manufacture and install new chips, while recycling the older ones. He says it's going to be fully self-sufficient.

That's the least practical solution of all (I say that as one of the few people in the world actually working on an orbital recycling project), especially if your technical advantage is launch, not inference chip manufacture. Apart from anything else, these giant satellites in LEO still need refuelling every five years, otherwise they'll just burn up in the atmosphere.

Replacing chips with newly launched chips on a refuelling cycle (and keeping all the heavy structural elements) is well within the boundaries of near term technology, but still involves enough mission and design-for-serviceability complexity to make it not obviously better than the 5 year recycle cadence Starlink and other modern constellations operate on.

Manufacturing newer, better chips in a microgravity environment using exactly the same material and plant technology as older chips is another thing entirely, particularly if you don't happen to own Nvidia et al's closely guarded trade secrets on how to make inference chips that are actually competitive and still aren't fully self sufficient even after the magical technology has been introduced because you need to top your massive satellites up with gas on a periodic basis....

Post reply on HN