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A look into the finances of SpaceX

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Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#261

Post by jandrese »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #211
jandrese wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's actually probable they will loose money in Q3, Q4 this year. This doesn’t jive with their investor guidance, nor the sales figures. I’m curious where this prediction is coming from. Maybe it is due to the capital expenditures from all of the new factories being built?

It's from the fact that the demand is falling and they need to slash prices to continue to sell. They benefited greatly from Covid price surges, but this is about to end. In a 'normal' year, they can't sell that many cars at the prices they did last year - let alone in a 'recession' year. I don't think their did any investor guidance about profits - I may be wrong though. Re factories - I don't think they are buildin…

You can download the investor report once a quarter from their website.

https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure

Deliveries are currently on track and each vehicle delivered is profitable, with a larger margin (18.2%) than any other major car manufacturer. This may not be true with the first Cybertruck deliveries later this year, but total number of delivered Cybertrucks will be tiny. Cybertruck deliveries should ramp up in 2024 and the margins should improve.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#262

Post by vyodaiken »

pfdietz wrote: post #92
oivey wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they used that experience decide that it would be cheaper to just build a huge rocket? The ISS also had the benefit of the shuttle, while US flights to LEO were in turmoil when the SLS was funded. It also wasn’t clear in hindsight how completely and utterly inept Boeing was and how effective SpaceX was going to be.

It's grossly more expensive the way they are doing it. They were originally going to use smaller commercial launchers until Senator Shelby and others held a political knife to their throats. SLS has absolutely no redeeming features. You're sunk deep in Stockholm Syndrome if you're still defending it.

It's ironic that Musks two big successes were funded by the Obama administration against vehement Republican objections. Shelby repeatedly tried to kill Space-X and without the $400million DOE loan Tesla would never have been able to start production - and without the electric car tax credit - it never would have been able to sell.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#264

Post by Veedrac »

HWR_14 wrote: post #237
bell-cot wrote: post #35

From Reuters... > In 2022, revenue doubled to $4.6 billion, helping the company reduce its loss last year to $559 million from $968 million, the WSJ reported. > The company reported about $5.2 billion in total expenses for 2022, up from $3.3 billion the year earlier, according to the report. That $5.2B of expenses got 61 successful, production Falcon rocket launches in 2022. Vs. some pretty-reasonable estimates put t…

That ~$5billion per launch includes a lot of amortized R&D and other costs that you are not counting in the 61 successful Falcon launches. It may be that the Falcon launchers are significantly cheaper, but the accounting methods are too different to just compare numbers.

No, it's the other way around.

SpaceX's yearly spending would include the 61 flights, but also literally thousands of satellites, presumably a huge number of commercial dishes, their human flight overheads, their Starship development program including ground support and production and testing of about a hundred Raptor engines, their sales and outreach, their specific contract work like HLS, and their mug business by the side.

If you were to amortize SLS's total dev costs (incl. Orion and SLS-specific ground support but excluding Constellation) over its reasonably expected lifetime flights, you'll be lucky as heck to get <$10B/flight, though of course we don't know how that adds up and so report the much smaller marginal numbers instead.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#265

Post by objektif »

nordsieck wrote: post #161
reso wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not possible to do a fair comparison of launch costs between Falcon 9 and other platforms without knowing the true cost of Falcon 9 launches.

> It is not possible to do a fair comparison of launch costs between Falcon 9 and other platforms without knowing the true cost of Falcon 9 launches. I don't know why you're so obsessed with cost. The only thing that matters when it comes to commercial providers is price. And SpaceX, (as far as I can tell) stands alone among the medium-heavy lift providers by providing a price directly on their website. Of course, fo…

Price is not a good metric here you can subsidize your pricing to hell if you have budget. Elon loves to do this btw.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#266

Post by HWR_14 »

xNeil wrote: post #94
Un1corn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people focus on bringing back far-right people to the platform, making the application inaccessible to logged out users and the failed attempts at Twitter Premium or whatever it's being called.

i remember i think back when jack dorsey stepped down and parag agrawal was slated to be the next ceo all of HN was doing nothing but talking about how the only viable path for twitter was to put the entire thing behind a subscription because there was too much garbage. now that elon is actually instating a paywall (that isn’t compulsory, and still lets you use it for free) all of HN seems to be thinking it’s the wro…

> nothing of the sorts has actually happened at all.

Twitter went from not-profitable to profitable-on-ads. The ad model was proven to work. That's what happened in the interim.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#267

Post by pclmulqdq »

pfdietz wrote: post #236
pclmulqdq wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One where we just launch one rocket instead of building a giant orbital bomb slowly (accumulating fuel) and transferring all those explosives through a complex series of difficult rendezvous maneuvers? One rocket is risky enough. There's a huge amount of extra risk involved in that sort of idea, which is why NASA isn't doing it, which can just be avoided with SLS and Starship.

It's actually less risky. Most of the launches are of propellant, which is completely replaceable. Reliability of a launcher is achieved by using it many many times, exposing all the gotchas. SLS will launch so infrequently it will be extremely risky. And you didn't answer my question, so I will answer it for you. If simply transferring a liquid from one tank to another is too risky, then there is no future in space.…

There is plenty of future in space by limiting propellant transfers to times when they are absolutely necessary. We can do them today, and have been able to for 30 years, and yet we rarely do, and never for the volumes of fuel you are proposing.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#268

Post by BlackjackCF »

flaminHotSpeedo wrote: post #214
tomp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, not all the credit. She might be brilliant, but she's worked other space jobs before. So clearly whatever company Musk has created, has allowed her to actually showcase her brilliance. CEO sets the vision. Without vision, even perfect execution is pointless.

"clearly" is doing so much heavy lifting for you it puts both starship and sls to shame... If you have evidence to support that takeaway I'd love to see it. I don't have evidence one way or the other, though I have seen unconfirmed scuttlebutt that SpaceX is successful _despite_ Musk, in no small part due to actively distracting and babysitting him to prevent him from meddling

This.

There’s something to be said about the fact that the other companies tied to Musk are constantly in the headlines for NEGATIVE reasons versus SpaceX… yeah. Tells you a lot.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#269

Post by wddkcs »

bmitc wrote: post #167
wddkcs wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is pricing in future growth. You can say the market is incorrectly evaluating the potential return, but it's hard to argue that Tesla and SpaceX aren't going to cash in on that potential. How else should the market be treating companies with obvious high growth potential?

> The market is pricing in future growth. Does that answer the question, though? Future growth is an estimate and approximation, is not real, and says nothing about current revenues and losses.

It's the assumption of Capitalism that markets are the most fair pricing mechanism. I'd love to see that proven untrue

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#270

Post by HWR_14 »

chasd00 wrote: post #90
mrguyorama wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Elon has been pretty vocal about regretting making Tesla public That's laughable, because without making Tesla public he wouldn't be able to live the superstar uber rich lifestyle he thinks he deserves. Pretty much everything he has personally is owed to Tesla public valuation.

> superstar uber rich lifestyle to be fair that lifestyle was enabled for the rest of his life in the paypal days. i don't think anything he does now is driven by getting a new car or eating at a fancier restaurant. He's been able to have as luxurious lifestyle as possible for a long time.

Cars and restaurants aren't "Uber rich" lifestyle. Buying Twitter to make sure he can control how viral his tweets are is an "Uber rich" move.

PayPal's money wouldn't even be enough to get him a sports team.

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