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SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#11

Post by joshuas »

jmtulloss wrote: post #7
joshuas wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does being publicly traded necessarily mean you focus on the short term nowadays? We've got companies like Snap who issue non voting shares. I imagine SpaceX could offer common shares that have no voting rights, accept all future dilution and require you punch yourself in the head on Tuesdays and they'd still have a pretty decent offering.

Your stock price still gets beat up if you don't meet earnings, which means you can't raise capital as efficiently (or even fairly) if you need to in the future.

I didn't say you could run a dumpster fire forever, just that you don't have to worry about your short term stock price because shareholders can't do anything about it (vote a new board in and vote you out) You'd make sure your ducks were in a row before any offerings of course.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#12

Post by xadhominemx »

jmtulloss wrote: post #7
joshuas wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does being publicly traded necessarily mean you focus on the short term nowadays? We've got companies like Snap who issue non voting shares. I imagine SpaceX could offer common shares that have no voting rights, accept all future dilution and require you punch yourself in the head on Tuesdays and they'd still have a pretty decent offering.

Your stock price still gets beat up if you don't meet earnings, which means you can't raise capital as efficiently (or even fairly) if you need to in the future.

And your employees are underpaid.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#14

Post by joshuas »

gozur88 wrote: post #10
overcast wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being publicly traded means you become slave to shareholders. Their profit is ALL that matters.

Well, yes. That's the entire point of a corporation.

You're only a slave to voting shares. We're about to watch this play out with Snap.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#15

Post by dancole »

gozur88 wrote: post #10
overcast wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being publicly traded means you become slave to shareholders. Their profit is ALL that matters.

Well, yes. That's the entire point of a corporation.

"The idea that all of the world should be measured in dollars to stockholders is actually a relatively new idea. It used to be that we thought that businesses had their purpose. Your purpose was to be making newspapers or fountain pens or whatever. And now we act as though the only purpose of a business was to enrich the people who trade it on Wall Street… Of course you’ve got to have profit, of course you’ve got to support your ownership. But that’s not why we’re doing it. We’re doing it because publishing a newspaper is a crucial thing to be doing." ~Andy Barnes

Companies use to be temporary, created for the public good (like building bridges) and did not exist to make a profit.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#18

Post by le-mark »

gozur88 wrote: post #6
loeg wrote: post #4

> Mr. Musk faces competition from another billionaire. Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, aims to send tourists and supplies into space. Is that line even close to true? Last I heard Blue Origin was years away from revenue and far behind SpaceX in terms of capability and manufacturing.

I think it would be far more correct to say "Mr. Musk faces potential competition from another billionaire." Though ULA is buying engines from BO.

The BE-4 is an impressive engine [1], at 550,000 lbs of thrust it's about 1/3 of a Saturn F1[2], and it's stage combustion lox/methane. Blue Origin is building some impressive hardware.

What's interesting to me is the dichotomy between Musk and Bezos vision for humanity in the Solar System. Musk is Mars focused almost exclusively. Bezos has talked about space habitats (O'neil cylinders for example [3]) as how he thinks things will play out. Certainly room for both.

Bezos isn't playing, he's going all in, selling $1 billion of shares a year to fund Blue Origin [4]. One way to look at this situation is Musk and Bezos competing to be king of transportation infrastructure for the Solar System. High stakes indeed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE-4

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder

[4] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/bezos-is-selling-amazon-stock...

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