Thanks for the deep dive on RKLB. They remain my favourite space SPAC, and continue to execute. Getting the Virgin facilities at such a discount during the bankruptcy firesale will also help accelerate Neutron development. RKLB continue to execute and I find their presentations very professional
A comment on "To put that in context, generating that much revenue via its Neutron rocket (@ $55M/launch) would require Rocket Lab to scale Neutron between 39 to 54 launches per year." Is it a bit odd to compare revenue with enterprise value (EV) because achieving that EV you don't need an equal amount of sales? Although I guess you want to provide a comparison here only.
Nonetheless, I just did a very quick search: In May 2019, SpaceX is valued at $33 billion, with 2018 launch revenue at $2 billion (CNBC). It has sent the first batch of Starlink to orbit in the same month, so let's assume the valuation has some but not a lot of impact on the valuation.
This should give them a similar P/S ratio? But of course, there are many other factors not being constant so we can never compare directly.
I think that's a fair point--I was moreso attempting to help size what analysts are expecting from RKLB's launch biz in the future
SpaceX is actually valued at $150B these days, with revenue of ~$8B in 2023. It's harder to do the same comparison here bc we don't have a breakdown of launch versus non-launch revenue. However, SpaceX still doesn't trade at anything close to a "typical" EV/revenue multiple (most ppl probably evaluate it via a discounted cash flows valuation)
Thanks for the deep dive on RKLB. They remain my favourite space SPAC, and continue to execute. Getting the Virgin facilities at such a discount during the bankruptcy firesale will also help accelerate Neutron development. RKLB continue to execute and I find their presentations very professional
I think RKLB has the strongest mgmt team of all the space SPACs
Thanks for the excellent analysis!
A comment on "To put that in context, generating that much revenue via its Neutron rocket (@ $55M/launch) would require Rocket Lab to scale Neutron between 39 to 54 launches per year." Is it a bit odd to compare revenue with enterprise value (EV) because achieving that EV you don't need an equal amount of sales? Although I guess you want to provide a comparison here only.
Nonetheless, I just did a very quick search: In May 2019, SpaceX is valued at $33 billion, with 2018 launch revenue at $2 billion (CNBC). It has sent the first batch of Starlink to orbit in the same month, so let's assume the valuation has some but not a lot of impact on the valuation.
This should give them a similar P/S ratio? But of course, there are many other factors not being constant so we can never compare directly.
I think that's a fair point--I was moreso attempting to help size what analysts are expecting from RKLB's launch biz in the future
SpaceX is actually valued at $150B these days, with revenue of ~$8B in 2023. It's harder to do the same comparison here bc we don't have a breakdown of launch versus non-launch revenue. However, SpaceX still doesn't trade at anything close to a "typical" EV/revenue multiple (most ppl probably evaluate it via a discounted cash flows valuation)
Great work! How about coming on The Geospatial Index to discuss all this? Wil