SpaceX not the behemoth everyone thought(www.axios.com)
52 pointsby kaycebasques4 hours ago10 comments
  • bandrami3 hours ago
    Sometime about 20 years ago we all got used to the idea of companies not having to actually make money on their business operations and I worry the bill for this is coming due soon
    • dmix3 hours ago
      The article says they had $5B in losses (half of which was -$2.5B for xAI) but also just signed a $15B/yr contract with Anthropic which would almost double their revenue

      Anthropic is also allegedly profitable https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-nears-first-quart...

      • bandrami3 hours ago
        Anthropic is profitable only if you carry forward the discounts they get for the first two months of this deal. That's why they're specifically talking about Q2. They start having to pay $1.6B/mo to SpaceX in July.
    • riffraff3 hours ago
      It would appear that the relative tax inefficiency of dividends over buy backs (and lack of wealth taxes) has fundamentally messed up the business world.

      Alas, I don't see that likely to change.

      • bandrami3 hours ago
        Along with the "borrow tax-free against unrealized equities gains" hack.
    • weakened_malloc3 hours ago
      It's been that way for a loooooong time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
      • edelbitter3 hours ago
        Is that not the commonly cited example for commodity trading, whereas meaningful comparison of fundamentals to market capitalization only started much later?
  • marcosdumay3 hours ago
    Hum... I've been out of stocks for a long while...

    Is a price to sales ratio of 100 anything near normal nowadays?

    EDIT: Wow, that was easy to find out. Turns out that didn't explode with the everything bubble, and almost no industry in the S&P 500 has an average above 5, the highest being a bit over 8.

    • branko_d3 hours ago
      No.

      Palantir, possibly the most overvalued company on the stock marker, has P/S 63 and P/E 144.

      Nvidia has P/S 21 and P/E 33.

      • marsten3 hours ago
        Second-highest P/E is Tesla, currently at 97.

        Apart from Palantir and Tesla, the other big companies are trading at what would historically be considered reasonable P/Es given their growth rates and profitability.

        What's really changed in the last 20-30 years is the incredible profit generated by the tech industry, and the defensive moats the biggest companies have built.

      • riffraff3 hours ago
        Tesla has a P/E of 383, I think?

        Of course, it shares the same reality distortion field.

        https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/

    • 3 hours ago
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  • ryandamm4 hours ago
    Did people really believe this was a financial behemoth? Or was this just a larger bet on the conglomerate that is Musk’s quasi-meme-stock empire?
    • marsten2 hours ago
      A lot of people believe in Musk and will invest in anything he wants to do. Is this rational? It depends on how it plays out.

      I think we may be seeing a new type of capitalism that maybe Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet hinted at: A business empire built around the outsized ambitions of a single charismatic individual. The valuations of Tesla and SpaceX only make sense if you attach an enormous premium to Musk the individual.

  • lokar3 hours ago
    Has anyone seen a detailed analysis of the starlink business that includes the cost to re-launch sats as they burn up?
  • senectus13 hours ago
    Dont forget that buying in on spaceX IPO is really just buying in on XAI/ X/Twitter and starlink.

    The "rocket ship" company is a very small part of SapceX.

    and tbh.. most of the buyers of spaceX are really just going to be 401k investments....

    • ben_wan hour ago
      X and xAI are also bad investments. Starlink is plausibly this valuable, but only if China doesn't clone all the parts and sell the same idea to much of the world, at a minimum forcing down margins and possibly undercutting entirely.
  • SilverElfinan hour ago
    So this entire scam is just dumping on retail investors and forcing everyone to prop up a weak company through our 401ks. There should be jail time for people involved.
  • ChrisArchitect2 hours ago
    Discussion:

    SpaceX S-1

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213933

    Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214017

  • vladsiu3 hours ago
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  • nomilk3 hours ago
    tl;dr

    > It's expected to be the largest IPO ever...but the prospectus shows just how much the IPO depends on expectations for future growth

    Same goes for every IPO. One point of difference about SpaceX is those involved do have a track record for delivery.

  • unsignedchad3 hours ago
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