Some other ways:
- Invest in a company or fund that owns a significant chunk of SpaceX (like Google, Bank of America).
- Convince an insider to part with their shares (either directly or through one of the secondary marketplaces).
- Get a job at SpaceX.
The equity upside at hire # 12,001, when the market cap is $150B... is probably not great.
I mean it might be a ton of fun, I just wouldn't do it for the 100x returns.
The issue here is the market doesn't know where we are on the S curve. If we've looking at space shuttle prices, we are at the end of the curve. If SpaceX pulls off reusability with the starship, then I'm going to make guesses we are much lower on the curve then most expect.
If they can get 'cheap' launches of 100-200T to orbit then a massive number of new possibilities open up and SpaceX won't sit around as just a cheap transport monopoly, they expand horizontally into other space based markets.
I'll say they will cap at 8-10B revenue (+inflation).
But this year, SpaceX will
If the only launch vehicle was the SLS, the market size would be $0. That's not meaningful!
The market size is limited, because, well, why would you send stuff up there? GPS, telco, science (iss). I guess if you make it cheap enough, high class hostels? (doubt it, and you have to have human rated spacecraft).
Until space mining is a thing, and in that case you should rather invest in mining companies, the market size is limited.
By many historical metrics, the stock markets are insanely overvalued these days. Far too much cash in the system, bidding up the "values" of anything that remotely resembles an investment.
SpaceX is insanely overvalued.
Maybe you think it isn't going to happen - and sure there is some risk (!) - but in the successful case, SpaceX should be worth many trillions. At least.
If some follow-on vehicle were ever developed adequate to support a martian colony, and lunar gravity were to turn out to suffice, getting any actual value return from such a vehicle is hard to imagine. You might try to use it to support automated mining of platinum-group metals from asteroids, but it is far from clear how that could be made to work out. That it seems possible in principle is usually not considered a sound basis for investment.
Musk certainly understands all of the above. He will cash out long before it is demonstrated to all be a pipe dream.
How could any rocket that can deliver several tons be inadequate for that?
Pressure suits for everybody on board might be crammed in, but more likely just two or three to use collecting more from cargo ships already landed.
For that to make any sense at all, somebody would need to figure out a profitable economy for a Mars colony. Nobody has been able to do that.
Big defense contracts from the US military is where SpaceX will strike gold, if they do. All the money is in launching stuff into Earth orbit to serve some practical purpose on Earth.
But anyway, op used P/E ratio to justify spacex valuation, in a totally wrong way. Their P/E ratio is in thousands (assuming there’s no creative accounting to show that profit, as they have many money burning projects and keep on raising billions). And they own a lot of the market and market itself isn’t growing fast.
You can justify their valuation with lofty goals and mission, if that’s your thing. But not with financial numbers and market sizes.
False.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aoRFnOFX_CzxTTOFLl8h...
Note that this significantly understates market growth because Amazon's 83 launch deal did not include SpaceX, as Starlink is a competitor.
Weight to orbit isn’t number of lunches. They’ve been doing around 30 per year, for paying customer, for many years now. And one of deals may push it higher, like Amazon, but so far they didn’t show ability to sustainably grow the whole market.
> They’ve been doing around 30 per year
(N+1 means N dedicated launches, plus 1 Starlink rideshare.)
This is pure invention. They've done 24+1 this year, putting them on pace for 33+1 to 34+2 — the schedule is for 46+1, but there are always customer delays. They did 27+2 last year. Then 14+2 before that, then 12+1, then 11. There was a small one-time launch glut in 2016-2017, when they were emptying the built-up commercial backlog other providers had underserved, but that's 18 and 21 launches, still much lower than their current run rate, and you can hardly blame satellite providers for taking a few years to adapt to build their new satellites.
We saw the same thing play out with Falcon Heavy, for example. After its initial flights, it was left without a lot to do. Only very recently have the satellites built for its capabilities shown up, and in the last 12 months it has flown 4 times, with yet two more planned for this year alone.
On the Falcon Heavy point, we're also seeing new valuable launch niches, with not just Heavy flying regularly, but an increase in commercial crewed launch too. Transporter flights are not especially expensive but they're clearly a valuable market that could not exist without SpaceX.
> And one of deals may push it higher, like Amazon, but so far they didn’t show ability to sustainably grow the whole market.
The pretense that an 89 launch deal for a long-lived constellation isn't growing the market is nonsense. That's like 10 years of flights at ULA's heyday, from one customer's initial launch deal alone.
Right. This is the same stock market that at one point said Tesla was worth more than every other car manufacturer. Combined.
Worth more than: Toyota, Volkwagen Group, Hyundai/Kia, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Honda, Fiat Chrysler, Renault, Suzuki, Daimler, BMW, Mazda and Mitsubishi. Combined. (Plus several Chinese manufacturers: SAID, Geely, Changan, Dongfeng).
In my opinion, the more interesting part is the valuation in light of no tangible exit strategy.
I wonder what time frame investors are looking at in order to realize their gains.