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SpaceX files to go public

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX files to go public

#191

Post by rsync »

jordanb wrote: post #15

You don't have to believe. If you have a 401k you will be an investor 15 days after launch. The IPO will go great, because the company will float a fairly small issuance. The big shareholders will not immediately sell. They will hold on and maybe even buy to support the price. Then, after 15 days, it will enter the indexes and everyone's 401k will start auto-buying this stock. You might say this is an obvious flaw in…

"If you have a 401k you will be an investor 15 days after launch."

This is not a given.

Many people have many different kinds of investments inside a 401k. Your 401k can own a rental property. Or gold. Or, in a more mundane scenario, the Russell 2000.

If it weren't for the glacial pace of plan administrators and plan holding companies there would be an opportunity for a fund provider to offer "S&P500exSpaceX". It's just another index, after all ...

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#192

Post by irishcoffee »

sublinear wrote: post #162
riffraff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. I am confident some companies will make bank with AI. I am also confident xAI is not one of those. It's as if you said "if you don't think Lycos is a good business you don't think search engines can work in general".

I kinda disagree because while most search engines failed and Google succeeded, they did not succeed by simply being a better search engine. This is only further demonstrated by their excellent leverage of Gemini. Google continues to succeed at being Google.

They absolutely succeeded because they had a better search engine. Without a doubt. I imagine there’s more than a few folks around here who used shit like askjeeves, altavista, et. al. Google was heads and shoulders better than those, and continued to get better over time.

No, I’m no Google fan, but it’s revisionist history to say they didn’t have the best search engine.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#193

Post by testbjjl »

saalweachter wrote: post #23
jordanb wrote: post #15

You don't have to believe. If you have a 401k you will be an investor 15 days after launch. The IPO will go great, because the company will float a fairly small issuance. The big shareholders will not immediately sell. They will hold on and maybe even buy to support the price. Then, after 15 days, it will enter the indexes and everyone's 401k will start auto-buying this stock. You might say this is an obvious flaw in…

Only NASDAQ so far; S&P 500 is apparently "reviewing its rules" but hasn't changed them yet. So you've got a full year to wait on that index fund, assuming they don't cave.

Cave? That’s the boring company, this is the space company.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#194

Post by scuff3d »

projektfu wrote: post #133
indoordin0saur wrote: post #113

SpaceX has reduced the cost of getting a ton of mass into orbit by a factor of 10 and with their new system (Starship) it's poised further reduce that to 100x. They launch, land and re-use their rockets so often now that what was considered impossible 15 years ago is now routine. They currently put more things into space than the rest of the world combined and by a huge margin. They also have the most advanced intern…

$16B is the top line gross revenue number. You don't count R&D as an expense per GAAP, so... They have claimed $8B in EBITDA, also leaving out the amortization of R&D costs. Those aren't audited numbers, as far as I know.

No related to this conversation, but I just started reading some books on finance and I actually know what most of those terms mean now! Lol

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#195

Post by xenadu02 »

manquer wrote: post #50
jordanb wrote: post #15

You don't have to believe. If you have a 401k you will be an investor 15 days after launch. The IPO will go great, because the company will float a fairly small issuance. The big shareholders will not immediately sell. They will hold on and maybe even buy to support the price. Then, after 15 days, it will enter the indexes and everyone's 401k will start auto-buying this stock. You might say this is an obvious flaw in…

>float a fairly small issuance SpaceX are widely reported to be planning to raise $75Billion in new capital. It may seem small a % for the valuation target. However that is about 3 times previous highest raise of $29B when Saudi Aramco went public few years back. The market simply may not be that deep[1] There is a good chance this one becomes the Wework of this decade. The valuation, amount being raised, cooling int…

I think you have to temper the skepticism a bit though.

SpaceX has dramatically lowered the cost of launching things into space. They are still the leader here. They can put a kg into orbit cheaper than anyone, even heavily subsidized state operations (EU and China).

Their order book continues to be full. Every single launch vehicle they roll off the line was pre-sold years ago, including its re-use flights.

I agree that Elon is their biggest potential problem and a big risk but their launch business is sound and wildly successful. If you believe access to space will be a growing segment of the economy in the future it isn't exactly a bad investment.

I remember all the people putting Tesla down when they IPO'd. I bought $4k of stock (all I could afford at that time). Sold $100k of it a few years ago, still have the other half worth near $220k. Their numbers at IPO time were garbage and it wasn't clear they would even survive. Then they started shipping hundreds of thousands then a million cars.

YMMV, consider all sides and make your own judgement. Just be careful about trusting the anti-SpaceX case. Even if everyone is technically correct about them it can still be a huge miss not to invest! The future is not static and if they can put the raised capital to productive use the IPO could end up being a fantastic deal. And FWIW I also agree the largest immediate risk is they are over-valued. Only time will tell on that front.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#196

Post by dawnerd »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #113

SpaceX has reduced the cost of getting a ton of mass into orbit by a factor of 10 and with their new system (Starship) it's poised further reduce that to 100x. They launch, land and re-use their rockets so often now that what was considered impossible 15 years ago is now routine. They currently put more things into space than the rest of the world combined and by a huge margin. They also have the most advanced intern…

Hey are absolutely not replacing “legacy” isps and certainly not mobile. Even if they had perfect coverage, sat signals are way too sensitive to obstructions.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#197

Post by fontain »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #113

SpaceX has reduced the cost of getting a ton of mass into orbit by a factor of 10 and with their new system (Starship) it's poised further reduce that to 100x. They launch, land and re-use their rockets so often now that what was considered impossible 15 years ago is now routine. They currently put more things into space than the rest of the world combined and by a huge margin. They also have the most advanced intern…

[dead]

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#198

Post by Spooky23 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #97
mosura wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since SNAP the whole IPO show has been a transparent scam to game the index funds. The market simply doesn’t have enough people actively investing because it rewards mass stupidity over generating meaningful returns.

Based on the list of businesses at the top, the stock market seems like it rewards profit margin and profits, by businesses that sell meaningful products and services. https://companiesmarketcap.com Can you provide an example of any of the businesses on that are on that list due to "mass stupidity"? They all seem to operate factories, employ many highly qualified people, and make a material difference in many or even…

Tesla is a great example. It’s 30% retail, 25% elon and insiders, and the remainder institutional, mostly index funds.

The investment thesis for Tesla is absurd. They built the market cap on hype and it got big enough that it remains a force. It’s a flailing company, kept afloat by bullshit.

The bigger issue is the death of small cap. Massive venture, sovereign wealth and PE funds don’t need the public market capital anymore, so they harvest the vslue and spit out the company late in the value cycle.

Snap, cool as it is, is a social media loser. The investors cashed out their shares to the public, who took the loss.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#199

Post by convexly »

notahacker wrote: post #190
convexly wrote: post #120

I'm genuinely waiting to see at what the valuation lands at. The gap between what SpaceX charges per launch and what everyone else charges is so wide that the moat basically is the rocket. Hard to compare against anything even now.

That feels like a surprisingly weak moat though; costs have already fallen to the point where launch isn't the biggest cost of space hardware any more, the competition is hotting up, and whilst launch costs give Starlink an advantage over other LEO satcomms constellations, other countries have strategic incentives to underwrite the existence of that competition, and once those assets have been sent to space it's a st…

The cadence point is understated. SpaceX launched 130+ times in 2025. The next closest was around 15. That's not a gap that closes in 2-3 years even with heavy subsidies, because it's not just the rocket, you need to account for the operational framework of doing it every 3 days.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#200

Post by notahacker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #159
chasd00 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling investors are going to watch Starship explode and explode while it's being developed without understanding the trial/error, hardware rich, approach SpaceX takes and not like it. That's going to hurt the stock price and therefore hurt the company. Before, when Starship exploded people just pointed and laughed at Musk but SpaceX kept going. For better or for worse it doesn't really bother him, don't f…

> get the feeling investors are going to watch Starship explode and explode while it's being developed without understanding the trial/error, hardware rich, approach SpaceX takes Investors have been doing this since SpaceX first raised outside funding. American capital markets are not that risk averse.

tbf those investments weren't traded on a liquid market, and I suspect Founders Fund are less worried about short term setbacks than your average mutual fund or mug punter.

But of course we also know that Musk-run public companies are immune to normal dynamics of worrying about next quarter's returns (or even worrying about the CEO publicly torching his brand equity) so the very last thing I'd imagine happening is SpaceX becoming risk averse and profitability focused

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