9 ms·

Morningstar values SpaceX at $780B, half its IPO target

212 points by berkeleyjunk 4mo ago

artwr 4mo ago
That's going to be interesting to see if others follow this as an anchor or buy more into the hype. Regardless it's still a large multiple of earnings...
- downrightmike 4mo ago
  There's a finite supply of space before we lock ourselves in with trash
  - gordonhart 4mo ago
    The risk here is severely overblown. Low earth orbit is self-cleaning with atmospheric drag. There’s comparatively little in MEO and even in a catastrophic Kessler syndrome scenario it’s still safe to transit through. Polluting higher orbits is so far beyond our current capabilities that it’s not even worth discussing.
    - datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
      This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone downplay Kessler syndrome so matter-of-factly. Has anti-doomerism spread to nearly every topic, or is Kessler syndrome really something whose severity has been massively overstated? Opportunity to shift my priors I suppose.
      - ianburrell 4mo ago
        Kessler syndrome is way overstated. One way to tell is talk about it closing off space. That can't happen, it is possible to cross debris bands with low danger. People also don't talk about different orbits. We can use higher low earth orbits if lower orbits are blocked. Also, it is possible to clean up debris. The low cost launch means lower cost cleanup. My understanding is that big objects are most dangerous cause they would cause a lot of debris.
      - NitpickLawyer 4mo ago
        Kessler syndrome doesn't "work" with the orbits these sats sit in. Even left dead and tumbling, the sats would re-enter by their own in ~5 years time. Even less with the recent lowering of their operational orbits. Also, a common misunderstanding of orbital mechanics (probably amplified by otherwise great cinematography, but poor physics depictions movie Gravity) is that after a collision things move to higher orbits and thus remain up there forever / change planes and affect other satellites. But that's not how it works, the orbit gets elongated, but the periapsis remains the same (or slightly lower), so the things / parts / pieces still re-enter the atmosphere. And the satellites are grouped in rings, with different inclinations, making it extremely hard to reach one from the other. Also also, space is like really really big. Plenty of space (hah) to put lots of rings of satellites and coordinate between themselves up there. The operators are the first ones who care about it, and they're slowly improving the existing systems, in both tracking (and access to tracking) and automated collision avoidance. Having 10k sats up there makes you good at keeping them separated.
    - bagels 4mo ago
      Low earth orbit includes orbits that take from hours to centuries to decay, depends a lot on altitude/apogee/perigee. Starlink for multiple reasons places satellites in the range where it takes ~5 years to decay, thankfully. Kessler syndrome is real though, and satellites do collide or break apart in LEO.
  - delecti 4mo ago
    To take the opposite angle of the other reply, if we lock ourselves in with trash, then orbit will be fucked for everyone. That's not something that SpaceX could plant their flag in and then be the only one to use it. If Kessler syndrome happens, SpaceX would be just as worthless as any competitors they might currently have an edge over.
Sidio 4mo ago
As is the case with Elon's companies (and a bit of the market itself), it feels like any logical valuation has no impact on the actual stock price.
- outside2344 4mo ago
  The market can stay insane longer than you can stay solvent. In the short term the market is a popularity machine but in the long term it is a weighing machine.
  - A_D_E_P_T 4mo ago
    > in the long term it is a weighing machine. This has not been the case for a long time. What do you suppose is BTC's correct valuation? How about TSLA?
    - pinkmuffinere 4mo ago
      > > in the long term it is a weighing machine. > This has not been the case for a long time. I think this comes down to a disagreement about what "long term" means. In finance, I would suggest a _lower_ bound on long term is 10 years. More comfortably, I'd suggest something like 20-30 years. This is long enough to ride out most depressions, and it is still fits within a persons working life-time. It also roughly matches the scale at which people should be planning for retirement and long-term care (imagine if you started your retirement planning just 10 years from retirement, it would be very difficult). So I think neither BTC's not TSLA's hype has reached long-term yet. They have been around long enough to meet some of these timelines, but the excessive hype really hasn't been so long -- maybe 5 years or so.
  - alasdair_ 4mo ago
    If the scales are only checked after the heat death of the universe, does it even matter? If the market can’t actually detect crooks and charlatans until long after they have stolen investors money, its ability to be “correct” is worthless.
snihalani 4mo ago
While I love this, Morningstar isn't a fiduciary
Devasta 4mo ago
Doesn't matter, as soon as they can they'll shove it into the indexes, meaning pension funds all over the world will be let holding the bag.
- analogpixel 4mo ago
  I keep seeing this comment on all these spacex posts, can someone ELI5 to me why the pension funds are going to be forced to buy this? (do they not have free will on what they buy?)
  - FarMcKon 4mo ago
    A lot of them have rules forcing them to have some amount of exposure to indexes of a market, or all entries in a market. There are MAJOR rule changes made to allow them to do this (90 day wait-time reduced to 5 days, financial stability requirements lowered or removed), which is why automated rules like that were created ("oh, if they make it to X, they were already vetted for Y, Z"). A lot of people are throwing a lot of trust and reputation on the bonfire to make this happen.
  - mrhottakes 4mo ago
    The big indexes will buy SpaceX soon. If pensions buy big indexes, which they do, they will own SpaceX indirectly.
    - dragonwriter 4mo ago
      Pensions buy big indexes in part because of the exact policies that were reversed to let SpaceX in; the behavior is not an immutable law of nature. OTOH, the changes may expose them to SpaceX before they could reasonably rebalance their holdings, even if they were to stop buying the affected indexes immediately.
  - dj_axl 4mo ago
    If the rule change goes through then SpaceX could be added to an index such as the S&P 500, where many (most?) pension funds invest. "S&P 500 has been considering a rule change to waive the earnings requirement and shorten the seasoning period for mega-cap IPOs like SpaceX." "Pension funds allocate 30% to 50% of their total portfolios to broad U.S. equities [in the form of index funds.]"
outside2344 4mo ago
Which is still 10x what it is worth
- MattDamonSpace 4mo ago
  Based on what?
  - dj_axl 4mo ago
    Revenue. (Or forecast revenue, take your pick.)
    - NooneAtAll3 4mo ago
      revenue has been "rockets - good. starlink - great. ai - big loss"
      - mrDmrTmrJ 4mo ago
        Why is "ai-big loss"? My understanding is that the S-1 showed a Q1 loss of xAI of $2.47 billion in Q1. But with the Anthropic Colossus-I rental agreement at $1.25B/month or $3.75B/quarter, xAI should now be net-neutral to cash-flow positive. If Colossus-II rents networked GB-200s, that could be up to +$47B/year at $9/hour/GB-200 for 555,000 GB-200s. For reference, current rental rates are $10-$27/hour for the same hardware. With Anthropic at a 55% month-over-month growth rate (implying a $150B/year run rate by August, or, more likely, sometime in late 2026), it seems very possible that xAI could be highly profitable as the only available compute resource. I'm not saying +$47B Colossus-II deal will happen, but even a small fraction of that remains highly material to xAI economics. xAI is likely already cashflow neutral. (Where am I wrong?)
        novaleaf 4mo ago
        the xAi revenue comes from renting their infrastructure to their biggest competitor. Anthropic is going to IPO for aprox 1/2 the valuation, is profitable, and can cancel the contract with 90 days notice.
dig1 4mo ago
IMHO, still too much. Someone posted this link [1] recently. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHD8BDFYyGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHD8BDFYyGI
- MPSimmons 4mo ago
  I knew it was going to be Patrick Boyle before I even clicked.
  - sunrunner 4mo ago
    It was either that or Casual Finance.
- dstroot 4mo ago
  Additional concern is the push to get it added to indices immediately. Forcing it into our retirement funds, 401ks and IRAs.
  - toomuchtodo 4mo ago
    The best you can do is avoid the exposure with changes to your portfolio composition while everyone else gets grifted. It's regrettable.
    - andsoitis 4mo ago
      I think this is poor advice. Its share of the index will be relatively small and if it is indeed a dud, the index will organically rebalance. If you’re a long-term investor, this would just be a temporary blip. On the other hand, if this is thr opposite of a dud, you’ll get the benefit of that.
      - toomuchtodo 4mo ago
        If one wants to gamble on the grift, that is what options are for. Otherwise, we might as well start adding NFTs to the indexes if fundamentals do not matter. Luck for some, risk management for others. Regardless, informed consent is important imho. Relevant precedence is ETFs that exclude Big Tech. https://www.defianceetfs.com/xmag/ https://www.defianceetfs.com/xmag/ ("XMAG, the first ETF designed to provide investors with exposure to the S&P 500, excluding the “Magnificent 7” (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla). XMAG offers a unique opportunity for investors to access the broader market while reducing concentration risk in these dominant tech stocks.") https://www.aboutschwab.com/mss/story/how-investing-and-gambling-are-not-the-same https://www.aboutschwab.com/mss/story/how-investing-and-gamb... ("Investing and gambling can both be fun. But they are not the same.") (none of this is investing advice, educational purposes only)
aeternum 4mo ago
[flagged]
- mrhottakes 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - oa335 4mo ago
    Not an Elon fan, but markets dictate the value, not analyst reports or "fundamentals". The stock is simply worth whatever people will pay for it. The fact that people are paying an implied valuation of 2T for it currently is a strong signal IMO.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - airstrike 4mo ago
      Markets dictate the value empirically, because by definition the price is set at the market, so that's something of a tautology. But markets don't do fundamental analysis on a stock to take a step back and think what is this really worth. In other words, markets are great at discovering the price at which something will transact, but that's just a function over all price expectation of all market participants. But each participant can do their own fundamental analysis. This is one of them. Some participants are better than others at such analyses. It's up to you to think through the ones that get published. Pricing things differently from the market observed price is how you get alpha.
    - danielmarkbruce 4mo ago
      Markets dictate the price. The terms "price" and "value" generally have actual meanings as used in financial markets. The idea that nothing can ever be mispriced (defined as price != value) is not really held by anyone serious.
      - kube-system 4mo ago
ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
Related: Michael Burry says neither SpaceX nor Anthropic is worth $1T https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368187
- baobabKoodaa 4mo ago
  If a bear craps in the woods and nobody is around to interview it, is the bear still bearish?
jmyeet 4mo ago
So I don't fundamentally care if SpaceX is overvalued or not. Like, that's on you for whatever you want to invest in or not. What I object to is all the rule changes by NASDAQ to essentially fix the IPO so massive pension funds and index funds are forced to invest in it. There have been multiple submissions about this but in short small floats are normally prohibited for index inclusion (not anymore), the trading days required for price discovery have been dropped to almost zero, the voting share structure would be an issue, the insider lockouts have been fixed and on it goes. There should be extra scrutiny for a trillion dollar company. SpaceX does have the Falcon 9, which is the completely dominant launch platform and first-stage reusability gives it an almost unbeatable advantage. Starlink has a lot of potential if satellite handsets can get small and cheap enough to compete with 5G effectively. Obital data centers are bullshit. Starship is going to be a significant drain on finances and the program as a whole faces significant headwinds. The big problem is xAI. It's a significant drain on SpaceX (costing allegedly $1B+/month). SpaceX would be a better company without it. But it's only there to rescue Elon from his disastrous Twitter purchase and the xAI investors from Elon's first bailout (of himself). There's almost no point in trying to figure out what a valuation should be because in many cases, nobody cares. Tesla is the posterchild for that.
- kybernetikos 4mo ago
  Ultimately it was inevitable that as passive investing got more and more popular, people would seek to game it. Not that I'm happy about it, but if this works, it is probably just the beginning of sneaky ways being found to trick passive money into taking on way more risk than it intended to. And of course passive investors are passive, so they may not even notice, and probably won't fight back until the inevitable crash.
  - jmyeet 4mo ago
    I think there's going to be blowback from this because this is "every other horse can only use three of their legs" levels of fixing. I looked into the how the rule-changing works. NASDAQ is what's called a Self-Regulating Organization ("SRO") in the legislation so it has a lot of power. Were it a government agency, it would be more difficult. Technically, the SEC has to approve all rule changes by SROs but in this administration in particular, that's just going to be a rubber stamp. By the way here's a speech the head of the SEC previously gave about deregulation of capital markets [1]. I was also curious if Loper Bright had changed anything here but it appears not. The sstatuory language here is clear rather than intentionally or unintentionally ambiguous. So the funds can technically challenge any such rules. They have standing. But the bar is difficult and I don't see it happening. But if this goes badly, what I think you'll see is changes in governance by pension funds that'll be reflected by Vanguard and Blackrock, which is "index-like" funds that have stricter governance with rules closer to what was the case before these rule changes were rammed through. I could be wrong. I hope I'm not. [1]: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2026/04/22/speech-by-chair-atkins-on-reducing-regulatory-burdens-and-promoting-market-driven-capital-formation/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2026/04/22/speech-by-chair-a...
kklisura 4mo ago
Man I'm so eager to find out how all this unfolds and when does the music stop for Elon and his shenanigans.
- supertroop 4mo ago
  Same here. I’ve had an IRA and 401k since I was 21 and I’m 59 now (but still feel as smart as a 21 year old). I doubt I’ll see my lifetime of investment go up in smoke, just a big hill: up super high for a few years and then back to 2024 levels by 2030.
  - echelon_musk 4mo ago
    > I’m 59 now (but still feel as smart as a 21 year old) Any tips?
    - supertroop 4mo ago
      I meant that as a pejorative self burn. :/
- fullshark 4mo ago
  He'll only be a multibillionare instead of a trillionaire?
- 627467 4mo ago
  As time passes it seems it will more likely end when any living being ends.
RoddaWallPro 4mo ago
I want to buy options against QQQ so badly -- but Tesla has traded at a crazy multiple of revenue/profits for a very long time, so I'm wondering if Elon/AI hype will keep these stocks high longer than I want to pay the risk premium for (options).
- taude 4mo ago
  I'm with you on this. I think the market bubble can stay alive and well a lot longer than you can survive an open short position. I think we're still a ways away from CEOs admitting that AI actually can't cut the cost of human capital in half.
  - margalabargala 4mo ago
    > I think we're still a ways away from CEOs admitting that AI actually can't cut the cost of human capital in half On the contrary, I think it certainly can. In the sense that productivity per person can be doubled. You could fire half your workforce and do nearly the same output. Trouble is, everyone who does that will get outcompeted by everyone who didn't fore their workforce, and instead doubled their output. We've seen it before with factories and computerization.
  - raducu 3mo ago
    > can stay alive and well a lot longer than you can survive an open short position. I mean let's look at bitcoin/crypto.
- cynicalkane 4mo ago
  Tesla is a meme stock like GameStop, but for a good fraction of America, so the market cap can be much larger. As long as TSLA owners don't care about the stock defying gravity, it will continue to do so.
- kibwen 4mo ago
  The fact that Tesla's stock price is so evidently detached from the performance of the company itself makes me wonder whether or not a public SpaceX will cause those investors who are just trying to ride the Musk train to exit Tesla stock and dump everything they can into SpaceX instead.
pandoro 4mo ago
The other day I was thinking: "if Musk disappears tomorrow would the valuation still be in the same ballpark?". I don't think so at all. In this context, it feels like even 150 Billions would be a big stretch considering revenue and forecasts. The coming IPOs and numbers are completely detached from reality and we are all in for a crash that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.
- moate 4mo ago
  "If the guy with insider access to the Kleptocracy left would this thing be as valuable" is a resounding NO when you're selling exploding space ships and a 3rd tier AI, a service that consumers continue to find complicated at best.
  - altcognito 4mo ago
    SpaceX sells starlink. That's probably the most valuable part of SpaceX by far based on recurring revenue. While they've made spaceflight reasonably cheap and reliable for a particular category of payloads - clearly there wasn't phantom demand just waiting to be launched. Given the IPO, I suspect they're hitting the wall with regards to new starlink signups, and SpaceX is done growing. SpaceX has $6.6B adjusted EBITDA, which, at a premium multiplier would probably put it somewhere around 80-150 billion as a company.
    - guidedlight 4mo ago
      There are competitors to Starlink arriving now. For example, the Australian government has selected Project Kepler (now called Amazon Leo) to provide broadband services to the Australian Outback. https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-statements/nbn-co-selects-amazons-project-kuiper https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/... And geopolitical shenanigans in Ukraine with Musk and Starlink means that it may not be a reliable partner.
      - AdamJacobMuller 4mo ago
deaton 4mo ago
Honestly this sounds about right for an innovative spaceflight/ISP company saddled with a failing AI lab and a toxic social media website.
cmiles8 4mo ago
There’s simply no version of financial reality that values this company at over 1T. Even 780B is extremely generous based on the current financial picture and a very optimistic view of the future. The AI IPOs are broadly in the same ballpark, and if they IPO at less than the last private valuation (a real possibility absent a perfect setup) that triggers a whole bunch of other messes. The window to get all these things closed before it all comes crashing down is closing, hence the sudden rush to IPO.
- Eji1700 4mo ago
  > The AI IPOs To be clear, the Space X prospectus seems to claim it IS an AI IPO.
  - cmiles8 4mo ago
    Indeed and it’s almost sad. The core of SpaceX is an amazing engineering company with real assets and a serious moat. Thats realistically maybe worth 250-400B-ish as a serious hardcore company. Then there’s all this other hype and nonsense tacked on to make a franken-company that’s just making a circus of the core story.
    - remus 4mo ago
      > Indeed and it’s almost sad. The core of SpaceX is an amazing engineering company with real assets and a serious moat. Completely. As if "We dominate the space launch and satellite internet markets" isn't enough, they're trying to tack on all this hypothetical stuff to inflate the valuation. Maybe some of it will come true in 50-100 years, but I'd bet a lot of it won't (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autonomous_Tesla_vehicles_by_Elon_Musk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...) because telling the future is hard. It'll be a real shame if the core, cool engineering that's happening at spaceX gets compromised by all the shenanigans going on elsewhere.
- kklisura 4mo ago
  > There’s simply no version of financial reality that values this company at over 1T. Aswath Damodaran recently (pre S-1) valued SpaceX at $1.2T [1] - yeah I was shocked as well. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to dig into his numbers. But yeah, there's your _financial reality_. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhY5EF1_LjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhY5EF1_LjQ
erulabs 4mo ago
While I agree with the sentiment that SpaceX today is not worth anywhere near 1T+, it's worth understanding that: a) SpaceX is currently trading at ~>1.5T in secondary markets and b) most of what the market is reacting to is the _chance_ that SpaceX goes on to become one of the largest companies in the world. Remember the reaction when Facebook IPOed? It was hilariously overpriced (at the time, on paper, based on existing revenues) and yet here we are. A 1% chance of earning a trillion dollars is worth 10B - SpaceX can more accurately be thought of as a 10% chance of earning 10T rather than a nominal everyday business.
- mikeyouse 4mo ago
  Facebook's IPO was something like ~20x revenue and 100x earnings. If SpaceX IPOs at $1.5T, that's nearly 80x revenue and if you buy their 'adjusted' EBITDA figures, 230x earnings. Not quite an order of magnitude, but substantially 'worse' financially.
- s1artibartfast 4mo ago
  Most sober post ive read on this topic
started_green 4mo ago
Musk fanboi here. If the bait and switch of xAI quotas continue, I would not expect their inference services to succeed. Before getting SuperGrok I had a premium subscription. After forking over $300 payment (annual) for SuperGrok, my quota was drastically cut immediately. As soon as I paid. This is for going from premium ($8 / month) to Super; the way cheaper premium counterintuitively had a much higher quota. Much. Versus $30/month, SuperGrok has a much lower quota and it’s been getting worse, even as xAI has surplus inference capacity to sell to Anthropic. I want Premium back, but I fear they have cut it back. To talk numbers: 35 videos every 90 minutes in premium versus after paying $$, around 30 videos per DAY in “Super” lol Grok. Granted a paltry 10 or so… it varies… of the videos are higher resolution than premium but that doesn’t matter because premium had unlimited upscaling, now gone. I’ve complained. Silence. Do not, do not, subscribe to xAI services.
anonymousiam 4mo ago
I waited for the Google IPO, but did not pre-order. I looked at the price on the first day of trading and decided it was overvalued (at about $100.00). GOOG today is worth about 200x the IPO price, so I guess I was wrong...
- kristjansson 4mo ago
  GOOG was a $20B company against a $10T S&P 500. SpaceX is going to be a $2T company against a $60T S&P 500.
- s1artibartfast 4mo ago
  I sold tesla when it hit 80 the first time
yalogin 4mo ago
Well let’s brace for a bunch of tweets against morningstar from the man in charge. I don’t think it matters to the retail investors though, they would all pour money into it. At least that’s my guess
dude250711 4mo ago
$7.8B would be a very fair valuation.
mrandish 4mo ago
This exposes a fundamental (and obvious) problem with not just SpaceX but the OAI and ANT IPOs as well. Their valuations are massive far beyond what the existing GAAP revenue and profit can justify, forcing large percentages of the valuation to rely on multiple future events not only happening but happening on the upper-end of any reasonable probability curve based on real-world priors. While all IPO valuations rely on forward-looking expectations, IPOs this large don't usually rely this much, on this many forward expectations for which there are so few real-world comps or priors to inform estimates. In short, when the error bars are in danger of swamping the signal, wild swings are likely. I expect more than one of these three to drop at least 10% relative to the overall market at some point in their first 18 months. All the potential upside (and probably much more) is already priced in. So taking this bet at the IPO price requires valuations most worry are already too high not only being correct but too low by quite a lot. To paraphrase Alice in Wonderland, these valuations require 'believing as many as six unlikely things before breakfast.' That said, I'll also predict that one of them will be trading >50% higher than its first year low ten years later (vs the overall market). Basically, they are all hugely overvalued in the ~3 year time frame but one may turn out to have been undervalued in 10 years. So, regardless don't buy any of them at IPO. If you're interested in one or more of them, wait for it to drop >10% vs the market and then re-evaluate for early indicators it might be 'the one'.
pseudohadamard 4mo ago
Lucifer is trading in Musk company shares? I mean, it seems appropriate, but still...
lofaszvanitt 4mo ago
This will be the litmus test of how many usamericans have been brainwashed by the look stupid and you'll be fine mindwashing virus. What was the highest grossing IPO to date, 100 bln max? And they want 1,4 tln? lol

212 points by berkeleyjunk 4mo ago

artwr 4mo ago

That's going to be interesting to see if others follow this as an anchor or buy more into the hype. Regardless it's still a large multiple of earnings...

downrightmike 4mo ago
There's a finite supply of space before we lock ourselves in with trash
- gordonhart 4mo ago
  The risk here is severely overblown. Low earth orbit is self-cleaning with atmospheric drag. There’s comparatively little in MEO and even in a catastrophic Kessler syndrome scenario it’s still safe to transit through. Polluting higher orbits is so far beyond our current capabilities that it’s not even worth discussing.
  - datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
    This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone downplay Kessler syndrome so matter-of-factly. Has anti-doomerism spread to nearly every topic, or is Kessler syndrome really something whose severity has been massively overstated? Opportunity to shift my priors I suppose.
    - ianburrell 4mo ago
      Kessler syndrome is way overstated. One way to tell is talk about it closing off space. That can't happen, it is possible to cross debris bands with low danger. People also don't talk about different orbits. We can use higher low earth orbits if lower orbits are blocked. Also, it is possible to clean up debris. The low cost launch means lower cost cleanup. My understanding is that big objects are most dangerous cause they would cause a lot of debris.
    - NitpickLawyer 4mo ago
      Kessler syndrome doesn't "work" with the orbits these sats sit in. Even left dead and tumbling, the sats would re-enter by their own in ~5 years time. Even less with the recent lowering of their operational orbits. Also, a common misunderstanding of orbital mechanics (probably amplified by otherwise great cinematography, but poor physics depictions movie Gravity) is that after a collision things move to higher orbits and thus remain up there forever / change planes and affect other satellites. But that's not how it works, the orbit gets elongated, but the periapsis remains the same (or slightly lower), so the things / parts / pieces still re-enter the atmosphere. And the satellites are grouped in rings, with different inclinations, making it extremely hard to reach one from the other. Also also, space is like really really big. Plenty of space (hah) to put lots of rings of satellites and coordinate between themselves up there. The operators are the first ones who care about it, and they're slowly improving the existing systems, in both tracking (and access to tracking) and automated collision avoidance. Having 10k sats up there makes you good at keeping them separated.
  - bagels 4mo ago
    Low earth orbit includes orbits that take from hours to centuries to decay, depends a lot on altitude/apogee/perigee. Starlink for multiple reasons places satellites in the range where it takes ~5 years to decay, thankfully. Kessler syndrome is real though, and satellites do collide or break apart in LEO.
- delecti 4mo ago
  To take the opposite angle of the other reply, if we lock ourselves in with trash, then orbit will be fucked for everyone. That's not something that SpaceX could plant their flag in and then be the only one to use it. If Kessler syndrome happens, SpaceX would be just as worthless as any competitors they might currently have an edge over.

Sidio 4mo ago

As is the case with Elon's companies (and a bit of the market itself), it feels like any logical valuation has no impact on the actual stock price.

outside2344 4mo ago
The market can stay insane longer than you can stay solvent. In the short term the market is a popularity machine but in the long term it is a weighing machine.
- A_D_E_P_T 4mo ago
  > in the long term it is a weighing machine. This has not been the case for a long time. What do you suppose is BTC's correct valuation? How about TSLA?
  - pinkmuffinere 4mo ago
    > > in the long term it is a weighing machine. > This has not been the case for a long time. I think this comes down to a disagreement about what "long term" means. In finance, I would suggest a _lower_ bound on long term is 10 years. More comfortably, I'd suggest something like 20-30 years. This is long enough to ride out most depressions, and it is still fits within a persons working life-time. It also roughly matches the scale at which people should be planning for retirement and long-term care (imagine if you started your retirement planning just 10 years from retirement, it would be very difficult). So I think neither BTC's not TSLA's hype has reached long-term yet. They have been around long enough to meet some of these timelines, but the excessive hype really hasn't been so long -- maybe 5 years or so.
- alasdair_ 4mo ago
  If the scales are only checked after the heat death of the universe, does it even matter? If the market can’t actually detect crooks and charlatans until long after they have stolen investors money, its ability to be “correct” is worthless.

snihalani 4mo ago

While I love this, Morningstar isn't a fiduciary

Devasta 4mo ago

Doesn't matter, as soon as they can they'll shove it into the indexes, meaning pension funds all over the world will be let holding the bag.

analogpixel 4mo ago
I keep seeing this comment on all these spacex posts, can someone ELI5 to me why the pension funds are going to be forced to buy this? (do they not have free will on what they buy?)
- FarMcKon 4mo ago
  A lot of them have rules forcing them to have some amount of exposure to indexes of a market, or all entries in a market. There are MAJOR rule changes made to allow them to do this (90 day wait-time reduced to 5 days, financial stability requirements lowered or removed), which is why automated rules like that were created ("oh, if they make it to X, they were already vetted for Y, Z"). A lot of people are throwing a lot of trust and reputation on the bonfire to make this happen.
- mrhottakes 4mo ago
  The big indexes will buy SpaceX soon. If pensions buy big indexes, which they do, they will own SpaceX indirectly.
  - dragonwriter 4mo ago
    Pensions buy big indexes in part because of the exact policies that were reversed to let SpaceX in; the behavior is not an immutable law of nature. OTOH, the changes may expose them to SpaceX before they could reasonably rebalance their holdings, even if they were to stop buying the affected indexes immediately.
- dj_axl 4mo ago
  If the rule change goes through then SpaceX could be added to an index such as the S&P 500, where many (most?) pension funds invest. "S&P 500 has been considering a rule change to waive the earnings requirement and shorten the seasoning period for mega-cap IPOs like SpaceX." "Pension funds allocate 30% to 50% of their total portfolios to broad U.S. equities [in the form of index funds.]"

outside2344 4mo ago

Which is still 10x what it is worth

MattDamonSpace 4mo ago
Based on what?
- dj_axl 4mo ago
  Revenue. (Or forecast revenue, take your pick.)
  - NooneAtAll3 4mo ago
    revenue has been "rockets - good. starlink - great. ai - big loss"
    - mrDmrTmrJ 4mo ago
      Why is "ai-big loss"? My understanding is that the S-1 showed a Q1 loss of xAI of $2.47 billion in Q1. But with the Anthropic Colossus-I rental agreement at $1.25B/month or $3.75B/quarter, xAI should now be net-neutral to cash-flow positive. If Colossus-II rents networked GB-200s, that could be up to +$47B/year at $9/hour/GB-200 for 555,000 GB-200s. For reference, current rental rates are $10-$27/hour for the same hardware. With Anthropic at a 55% month-over-month growth rate (implying a $150B/year run rate by August, or, more likely, sometime in late 2026), it seems very possible that xAI could be highly profitable as the only available compute resource. I'm not saying +$47B Colossus-II deal will happen, but even a small fraction of that remains highly material to xAI economics. xAI is likely already cashflow neutral. (Where am I wrong?)
      - novaleaf 4mo ago
        the xAi revenue comes from renting their infrastructure to their biggest competitor. Anthropic is going to IPO for aprox 1/2 the valuation, is profitable, and can cancel the contract with 90 days notice.

dig1 4mo ago

IMHO, still too much. Someone posted this link [1] recently. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHD8BDFYyGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHD8BDFYyGI

MPSimmons 4mo ago
I knew it was going to be Patrick Boyle before I even clicked.
- sunrunner 4mo ago
  It was either that or Casual Finance.
dstroot 4mo ago
Additional concern is the push to get it added to indices immediately. Forcing it into our retirement funds, 401ks and IRAs.
- toomuchtodo 4mo ago
  The best you can do is avoid the exposure with changes to your portfolio composition while everyone else gets grifted. It's regrettable.
  - andsoitis 4mo ago
    I think this is poor advice. Its share of the index will be relatively small and if it is indeed a dud, the index will organically rebalance. If you’re a long-term investor, this would just be a temporary blip. On the other hand, if this is thr opposite of a dud, you’ll get the benefit of that.
    - toomuchtodo 4mo ago
      If one wants to gamble on the grift, that is what options are for. Otherwise, we might as well start adding NFTs to the indexes if fundamentals do not matter. Luck for some, risk management for others. Regardless, informed consent is important imho. Relevant precedence is ETFs that exclude Big Tech. https://www.defianceetfs.com/xmag/ https://www.defianceetfs.com/xmag/ ("XMAG, the first ETF designed to provide investors with exposure to the S&P 500, excluding the “Magnificent 7” (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla). XMAG offers a unique opportunity for investors to access the broader market while reducing concentration risk in these dominant tech stocks.") https://www.aboutschwab.com/mss/story/how-investing-and-gambling-are-not-the-same https://www.aboutschwab.com/mss/story/how-investing-and-gamb... ("Investing and gambling can both be fun. But they are not the same.") (none of this is investing advice, educational purposes only)

aeternum 4mo ago

[flagged]

mrhottakes 4mo ago
[flagged]
- oa335 4mo ago
  Not an Elon fan, but markets dictate the value, not analyst reports or "fundamentals". The stock is simply worth whatever people will pay for it. The fact that people are paying an implied valuation of 2T for it currently is a strong signal IMO.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - airstrike 4mo ago
    Markets dictate the value empirically, because by definition the price is set at the market, so that's something of a tautology. But markets don't do fundamental analysis on a stock to take a step back and think what is this really worth. In other words, markets are great at discovering the price at which something will transact, but that's just a function over all price expectation of all market participants. But each participant can do their own fundamental analysis. This is one of them. Some participants are better than others at such analyses. It's up to you to think through the ones that get published. Pricing things differently from the market observed price is how you get alpha.
  - danielmarkbruce 4mo ago
    Markets dictate the price. The terms "price" and "value" generally have actual meanings as used in financial markets. The idea that nothing can ever be mispriced (defined as price != value) is not really held by anyone serious.
    - kube-system 4mo ago

ChrisArchitect 4mo ago

Related: Michael Burry says neither SpaceX nor Anthropic is worth $1T https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368187

baobabKoodaa 4mo ago
If a bear craps in the woods and nobody is around to interview it, is the bear still bearish?

jmyeet 4mo ago

So I don't fundamentally care if SpaceX is overvalued or not. Like, that's on you for whatever you want to invest in or not. What I object to is all the rule changes by NASDAQ to essentially fix the IPO so massive pension funds and index funds are forced to invest in it. There have been multiple submissions about this but in short small floats are normally prohibited for index inclusion (not anymore), the trading days required for price discovery have been dropped to almost zero, the voting share structure would be an issue, the insider lockouts have been fixed and on it goes. There should be extra scrutiny for a trillion dollar company. SpaceX does have the Falcon 9, which is the completely dominant launch platform and first-stage reusability gives it an almost unbeatable advantage. Starlink has a lot of potential if satellite handsets can get small and cheap enough to compete with 5G effectively. Obital data centers are bullshit. Starship is going to be a significant drain on finances and the program as a whole faces significant headwinds. The big problem is xAI. It's a significant drain on SpaceX (costing allegedly $1B+/month). SpaceX would be a better company without it. But it's only there to rescue Elon from his disastrous Twitter purchase and the xAI investors from Elon's first bailout (of himself). There's almost no point in trying to figure out what a valuation should be because in many cases, nobody cares. Tesla is the posterchild for that.

kybernetikos 4mo ago
Ultimately it was inevitable that as passive investing got more and more popular, people would seek to game it. Not that I'm happy about it, but if this works, it is probably just the beginning of sneaky ways being found to trick passive money into taking on way more risk than it intended to. And of course passive investors are passive, so they may not even notice, and probably won't fight back until the inevitable crash.
- jmyeet 4mo ago
  I think there's going to be blowback from this because this is "every other horse can only use three of their legs" levels of fixing. I looked into the how the rule-changing works. NASDAQ is what's called a Self-Regulating Organization ("SRO") in the legislation so it has a lot of power. Were it a government agency, it would be more difficult. Technically, the SEC has to approve all rule changes by SROs but in this administration in particular, that's just going to be a rubber stamp. By the way here's a speech the head of the SEC previously gave about deregulation of capital markets [1]. I was also curious if Loper Bright had changed anything here but it appears not. The sstatuory language here is clear rather than intentionally or unintentionally ambiguous. So the funds can technically challenge any such rules. They have standing. But the bar is difficult and I don't see it happening. But if this goes badly, what I think you'll see is changes in governance by pension funds that'll be reflected by Vanguard and Blackrock, which is "index-like" funds that have stricter governance with rules closer to what was the case before these rule changes were rammed through. I could be wrong. I hope I'm not. [1]: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2026/04/22/speech-by-chair-atkins-on-reducing-regulatory-burdens-and-promoting-market-driven-capital-formation/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2026/04/22/speech-by-chair-a...

kklisura 4mo ago

Man I'm so eager to find out how all this unfolds and when does the music stop for Elon and his shenanigans.

supertroop 4mo ago
Same here. I’ve had an IRA and 401k since I was 21 and I’m 59 now (but still feel as smart as a 21 year old). I doubt I’ll see my lifetime of investment go up in smoke, just a big hill: up super high for a few years and then back to 2024 levels by 2030.
- echelon_musk 4mo ago
  > I’m 59 now (but still feel as smart as a 21 year old) Any tips?
  - supertroop 4mo ago
    I meant that as a pejorative self burn. :/
fullshark 4mo ago
He'll only be a multibillionare instead of a trillionaire?
627467 4mo ago
As time passes it seems it will more likely end when any living being ends.

RoddaWallPro 4mo ago

I want to buy options against QQQ so badly -- but Tesla has traded at a crazy multiple of revenue/profits for a very long time, so I'm wondering if Elon/AI hype will keep these stocks high longer than I want to pay the risk premium for (options).

taude 4mo ago
I'm with you on this. I think the market bubble can stay alive and well a lot longer than you can survive an open short position. I think we're still a ways away from CEOs admitting that AI actually can't cut the cost of human capital in half.
- margalabargala 4mo ago
  > I think we're still a ways away from CEOs admitting that AI actually can't cut the cost of human capital in half On the contrary, I think it certainly can. In the sense that productivity per person can be doubled. You could fire half your workforce and do nearly the same output. Trouble is, everyone who does that will get outcompeted by everyone who didn't fore their workforce, and instead doubled their output. We've seen it before with factories and computerization.
- raducu 3mo ago
  > can stay alive and well a lot longer than you can survive an open short position. I mean let's look at bitcoin/crypto.
cynicalkane 4mo ago
Tesla is a meme stock like GameStop, but for a good fraction of America, so the market cap can be much larger. As long as TSLA owners don't care about the stock defying gravity, it will continue to do so.
kibwen 4mo ago
The fact that Tesla's stock price is so evidently detached from the performance of the company itself makes me wonder whether or not a public SpaceX will cause those investors who are just trying to ride the Musk train to exit Tesla stock and dump everything they can into SpaceX instead.

pandoro 4mo ago

The other day I was thinking: "if Musk disappears tomorrow would the valuation still be in the same ballpark?". I don't think so at all. In this context, it feels like even 150 Billions would be a big stretch considering revenue and forecasts. The coming IPOs and numbers are completely detached from reality and we are all in for a crash that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.

moate 4mo ago
"If the guy with insider access to the Kleptocracy left would this thing be as valuable" is a resounding NO when you're selling exploding space ships and a 3rd tier AI, a service that consumers continue to find complicated at best.
- altcognito 4mo ago
  SpaceX sells starlink. That's probably the most valuable part of SpaceX by far based on recurring revenue. While they've made spaceflight reasonably cheap and reliable for a particular category of payloads - clearly there wasn't phantom demand just waiting to be launched. Given the IPO, I suspect they're hitting the wall with regards to new starlink signups, and SpaceX is done growing. SpaceX has $6.6B adjusted EBITDA, which, at a premium multiplier would probably put it somewhere around 80-150 billion as a company.
  - guidedlight 4mo ago
    There are competitors to Starlink arriving now. For example, the Australian government has selected Project Kepler (now called Amazon Leo) to provide broadband services to the Australian Outback. https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-statements/nbn-co-selects-amazons-project-kuiper https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/... And geopolitical shenanigans in Ukraine with Musk and Starlink means that it may not be a reliable partner.
    - AdamJacobMuller 4mo ago

deaton 4mo ago

Honestly this sounds about right for an innovative spaceflight/ISP company saddled with a failing AI lab and a toxic social media website.

cmiles8 4mo ago

There’s simply no version of financial reality that values this company at over 1T. Even 780B is extremely generous based on the current financial picture and a very optimistic view of the future. The AI IPOs are broadly in the same ballpark, and if they IPO at less than the last private valuation (a real possibility absent a perfect setup) that triggers a whole bunch of other messes. The window to get all these things closed before it all comes crashing down is closing, hence the sudden rush to IPO.

Eji1700 4mo ago
> The AI IPOs To be clear, the Space X prospectus seems to claim it IS an AI IPO.
- cmiles8 4mo ago
  Indeed and it’s almost sad. The core of SpaceX is an amazing engineering company with real assets and a serious moat. Thats realistically maybe worth 250-400B-ish as a serious hardcore company. Then there’s all this other hype and nonsense tacked on to make a franken-company that’s just making a circus of the core story.
  - remus 4mo ago
    > Indeed and it’s almost sad. The core of SpaceX is an amazing engineering company with real assets and a serious moat. Completely. As if "We dominate the space launch and satellite internet markets" isn't enough, they're trying to tack on all this hypothetical stuff to inflate the valuation. Maybe some of it will come true in 50-100 years, but I'd bet a lot of it won't (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autonomous_Tesla_vehicles_by_Elon_Musk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...) because telling the future is hard. It'll be a real shame if the core, cool engineering that's happening at spaceX gets compromised by all the shenanigans going on elsewhere.
kklisura 4mo ago
> There’s simply no version of financial reality that values this company at over 1T. Aswath Damodaran recently (pre S-1) valued SpaceX at $1.2T [1] - yeah I was shocked as well. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to dig into his numbers. But yeah, there's your _financial reality_. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhY5EF1_LjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhY5EF1_LjQ

erulabs 4mo ago

While I agree with the sentiment that SpaceX today is not worth anywhere near 1T+, it's worth understanding that: a) SpaceX is currently trading at ~>1.5T in secondary markets and b) most of what the market is reacting to is the _chance_ that SpaceX goes on to become one of the largest companies in the world. Remember the reaction when Facebook IPOed? It was hilariously overpriced (at the time, on paper, based on existing revenues) and yet here we are. A 1% chance of earning a trillion dollars is worth 10B - SpaceX can more accurately be thought of as a 10% chance of earning 10T rather than a nominal everyday business.

mikeyouse 4mo ago
Facebook's IPO was something like ~20x revenue and 100x earnings. If SpaceX IPOs at $1.5T, that's nearly 80x revenue and if you buy their 'adjusted' EBITDA figures, 230x earnings. Not quite an order of magnitude, but substantially 'worse' financially.
s1artibartfast 4mo ago
Most sober post ive read on this topic

started_green 4mo ago

Musk fanboi here. If the bait and switch of xAI quotas continue, I would not expect their inference services to succeed. Before getting SuperGrok I had a premium subscription. After forking over $300 payment (annual) for SuperGrok, my quota was drastically cut immediately. As soon as I paid. This is for going from premium ($8 / month) to Super; the way cheaper premium counterintuitively had a much higher quota. Much. Versus $30/month, SuperGrok has a much lower quota and it’s been getting worse, even as xAI has surplus inference capacity to sell to Anthropic. I want Premium back, but I fear they have cut it back. To talk numbers: 35 videos every 90 minutes in premium versus after paying $$, around 30 videos per DAY in “Super” lol Grok. Granted a paltry 10 or so… it varies… of the videos are higher resolution than premium but that doesn’t matter because premium had unlimited upscaling, now gone. I’ve complained. Silence. Do not, do not, subscribe to xAI services.

anonymousiam 4mo ago

I waited for the Google IPO, but did not pre-order. I looked at the price on the first day of trading and decided it was overvalued (at about $100.00). GOOG today is worth about 200x the IPO price, so I guess I was wrong...

kristjansson 4mo ago
GOOG was a $20B company against a $10T S&P 500. SpaceX is going to be a $2T company against a $60T S&P 500.
s1artibartfast 4mo ago
I sold tesla when it hit 80 the first time

yalogin 4mo ago

Well let’s brace for a bunch of tweets against morningstar from the man in charge. I don’t think it matters to the retail investors though, they would all pour money into it. At least that’s my guess

dude250711 4mo ago

$7.8B would be a very fair valuation.

mrandish 4mo ago

This exposes a fundamental (and obvious) problem with not just SpaceX but the OAI and ANT IPOs as well. Their valuations are massive far beyond what the existing GAAP revenue and profit can justify, forcing large percentages of the valuation to rely on multiple future events not only happening but happening on the upper-end of any reasonable probability curve based on real-world priors. While all IPO valuations rely on forward-looking expectations, IPOs this large don't usually rely this much, on this many forward expectations for which there are so few real-world comps or priors to inform estimates. In short, when the error bars are in danger of swamping the signal, wild swings are likely. I expect more than one of these three to drop at least 10% relative to the overall market at some point in their first 18 months. All the potential upside (and probably much more) is already priced in. So taking this bet at the IPO price requires valuations most worry are already too high not only being correct but too low by quite a lot. To paraphrase Alice in Wonderland, these valuations require 'believing as many as six unlikely things before breakfast.' That said, I'll also predict that one of them will be trading >50% higher than its first year low ten years later (vs the overall market). Basically, they are all hugely overvalued in the ~3 year time frame but one may turn out to have been undervalued in 10 years. So, regardless don't buy any of them at IPO. If you're interested in one or more of them, wait for it to drop >10% vs the market and then re-evaluate for early indicators it might be 'the one'.

pseudohadamard 4mo ago

Lucifer is trading in Musk company shares? I mean, it seems appropriate, but still...

lofaszvanitt 4mo ago

This will be the litmus test of how many usamericans have been brainwashed by the look stupid and you'll be fine mindwashing virus. What was the highest grossing IPO to date, 100 bln max? And they want 1,4 tln? lol