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

Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 205 posts

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#31

Post by solumunus »

next_xibalba wrote: post #14
drannex wrote: post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

Why does it matter to you? I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk, particularly on the negative side. The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Personally, I hope it’s true. Starlink is good for the world.

What a ridiculous standard for deciding whether you respect someone or not. Public figures can give you plenty of valid reasons for disliking them without having met them. I could list endless public figures from past and present which you almost certainly don’t like because of their words and actions.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#32

Post by webkike »

next_xibalba wrote: post #14
drannex wrote: post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

Why does it matter to you? I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk, particularly on the negative side. The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Personally, I hope it’s true. Starlink is good for the world.

I haven’t met him, but he has bought out my favorite social media website solely so he can insert his insipid opinions and comments, so I think the negative reactions are warranted.

Why do people always talk about needing to meet a guy to have an opinion on them? I haven’t met Dick Cheney either

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#33

Post by zachrip »

next_xibalba wrote: post #14
drannex wrote: post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

Why does it matter to you? I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk, particularly on the negative side. The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Personally, I hope it’s true. Starlink is good for the world.

You do not need to meet someone to form an opinion of them.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#34

Post by NelsonMinar »

next_xibalba wrote: post #14
drannex wrote: post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

Why does it matter to you? I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk, particularly on the negative side. The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Personally, I hope it’s true. Starlink is good for the world.

Well here we are talking about his latest statement. I think it bears examination whether what he says is trustworthy.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#35

Post by Difwif »

I know a lot of people with access to fiber in cities discount Starlink and I miss my 1Gbps fiber. Also the Elon hate train probably has something to do with it.

Starlink is life changing for a lot of people. You would not believe how many different communities ISP market has been shaken up by Starlink. Many people went from high latency metered internet measured in kilobits to 100Mbps at 30ms. I've seen this both in the US and outside the US. Not mention previously unthinkable things like living on a sailboat and working remotely.

The biggest issue at this point is cost. It's mostly a premium product for high income people. I hope access gets cheaper as they scale. I think in general having a globally connected planet with high speed internet is going to make the world better (once we overcome the negative side effects of things like social media addiction)

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#36

Post by megaman821 »

It's cool that Starlink is sustainable. Space-based, fast internet is the infrastructure we never knew we needed. It seems too useful to fail, there are a lot of areas where satellite internet is the best choice, from airplanes, boats, remote science outposts, emergency situations, and rural communities.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#37

Post by ckdarby »

fdaslkjlkjklj wrote: post #7

For those who don't know, capital expenses are depreciated over their useful lifetime (for StarLink sats, estimated at 5 years) and aren't accounted for by cashflow. Cash flow positive tells you they're not going to go broke, at least until they need more capital expenses (5 years...), which is a milestone, sure. But profit is a better measure of a business's value as a going concern. What happens in 5 years when the…

I get where this comment is coming from, but isn't it much more complicated?

They're cashflow breakeven and could run net income negative over the next five years as a subscription market grab with the capex amortization over the 5 years.

It is possible they could become incredibly profitable when the capex investment in 5 years is much less than the initial capex.

Equipment costed $5 or $1/yr. Replacement equipment could cost $2.50 or $0.50/yr.

I see this plenty with business capex for on-prem/datacenters. What costed $5M over 5 years on a refresh replacement for 1:1 replacement is usually more than half the cost.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#38

Post by Zigurd »

fdaslkjlkjklj wrote: post #7

For those who don't know, capital expenses are depreciated over their useful lifetime (for StarLink sats, estimated at 5 years) and aren't accounted for by cashflow. Cash flow positive tells you they're not going to go broke, at least until they need more capital expenses (5 years...), which is a milestone, sure. But profit is a better measure of a business's value as a going concern. What happens in 5 years when the…

Starlink also has capex and subsequent opex for ground stations. Even with inter-satellite communications links in the 1.5gen satellites, it needs ground stations and interconnection with backbone operators.

It is unclear if, as bad as many terrestrial ISPs are, Starlink has a TAM big enough. It's going to be slower and less reliable than terrestrial wireless, and expanding terrestrial wireless coverage is going to be cheaper for a very large percentage of potential customers. Starlink is not competitive with terrestrial fiber.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#39

Post by Tepix »

capableweb wrote: post #30
next_xibalba wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter to you? I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk, particularly on the negative side. The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Personally, I hope it’s true. Starlink is good for the world.

> The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Why would people most probably been positively impacted by him? He seems to constantly have knee-jerk reactions to things happening around him, and his companies seems to frequently have issues with overworking employees.

2 examples:

He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

He's made transport to space a lot cheaper, saving a lot of taxpayer's money.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#40

Post by organsnyder »

rburhum wrote: post #28
drannex wrote: post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

[flagged]

Starlink has also been used by Musk to dictate decisions in the Ukraine war. That's far more serious than "just" a "culture war" issue.
Post reply on HN