Good morning. How much faith do you put in Elon Musk? If you can’t wait to get a piece of SpaceX after studying its prospectus, the answer is, a lot. Musk’s rocket-and-satellite company filed its S-1 yesterday, giving us a detailed look at the financials behind what’s expected to be the biggest initial public offering in history.
In some ways, this is the stuff of speculative fiction: a bold plea for capital to conquer new worlds, a dream for one man to net the largest pay package ever handed out on earth if he manages to establish a permanent colony of at least 1 million people on Mars. (See page 236.) Though he might try, they can’t all be named Musk. And before SpaceX can plant a flag on other planets, it may need to address some red flags here at home. Among them:
Revenue. SpaceX expects to raise up to $75–80 billion at a valuation of $1.5 trillion or more. Saudi Aramco raised $29.4 billion at roughly the same valuation in 2019. The difference is that it made a profit of $21.3 billion on $71 billion in revenue in the quarter prior to filing while SpaceX lost $1.3 billion on $4.7 billion in revenue last quarter. And the source of that revenue is mixed, with the Starlink satellite business heavily subsidizing Musk’s rockets and xAI business.
