A look into the finances of SpaceX

[bell-cot]

From Reuters...

> In 2022, revenue doubled to $4.6 billion, helping the company reduce its loss last year to $559 million from $968 million, the WSJ reported.

> The company reported about $5.2 billion in total expenses for 2022, up from $3.3 billion the year earlier, according to the report.

That $5.2B of expenses got 61 successful, production Falcon rocket launches in 2022. Vs. some pretty-reasonable estimates put the total cost of NASA's "Space Launch System" at ~$5B per individual launch.

[reso]

You can't compare falcon to SLS because Falcon cannot do what SLS does.

You can't compare SpaceX's figures to NASA because NASA has many, many more reporting obligations than SpaceX.

Every report on Falcon 9 costs has made this mistake forever. SpaceX does not release their full costs. What numbers we have for them are PR releases. Meanwhile, NASA's budgets are public and comprehensive, and they have legal parameters on what they have to include in their statements about costs that SpaceX does not have.

[jve]

Part of those expenses are probably building starlink and starship r&d. I suspect F9 no longer has significant r&d expenses.

I wonder if your NASA figure also includes first launch, that may include r&d?! Because for a single launch, when you substract r&d or even spread out across all planned launches - can't be that high...

I'm just for comparing apples to apples not apples to oranges.

[nordsieck]

> some pretty-reasonable estimates put the total cost of NASA's "Space Launch System" at ~$5B per individual launch.

SLS is bad, but it's not quite that bad.

A full launch of SLS + Orion is ~4.1B. A launch of SLS without Orion (a theoretical cargo mission) is "just" ~$2.8B.

[cypress66]

Falcon isn't really comparable to the SLS, but yes the SLS is awful cost wise. Starship will almost surely be between one and two orders of magnitude cheaper per launch vs SLS.

[bell-cot]

FWIW, here's a fairly deep (and charitable) article on the SLS by Eric Berger -

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/the-sls-rocket-is-th...

[HWR_14]

That ~$5billion per launch includes a lot of amortized R&D and other costs that you are not counting in the 61 successful Falcon launches. It may be that the Falcon launchers are significantly cheaper, but the accounting methods are too different to just compare numbers.

[oblio]

It's ridiculous what amounts of money these ventures can siphon away in the US. See Uber, AirBNB, etc. I'm not saying they don't pay off, but these businesses literally choke most international competition.

There are probably 1-2 countries in the world that can afford to keep running a business with losses at around $1bn per year.

[sidewndr46]

The SLS is designed to reach political goals, not financial targets.

[Fordec]

In other news it cost me $1500 to do a year of grocery shopping trips while it cost $1500 for one transatlantic return trip holiday.

Apples to oranges comparison. 400km to low earth orbit is not compatible to a 384400km trip to another gravity well.

[Leary]

Its revenue will almost double again this year (2023) by looking at the number of launches[1]. Definitely the most exciting company Elon has (personal opinion)

[1] https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#launchhistory-per-year

[entropicgravity]

Don't worry about SpaceX, it's now an essential part of the US military. Without SpaceX's satellite internet the war in Ukraine would have been much hard to deal with. SpaceX's capacity to launch rockets two or three times a week is something the US military is war gaming around, never mind the same thing but soon with the Starship. SpaceX is in good hands just as its increasing enterprise value shows.

[NovaDudely]

Bingo! Now that they are a key part of the industrial complex, good money can be thrown at bad and it will all still work out.

Not saying that is what they are doing but they are now in a key position that big mistakes are not necessarily fatal to the company.

[pavon]

Those numbers are pretty remarkable given how much money they are pouring into developing Starship and expanding Starlink right now. Over half of their launches have been for Starlink, and yet they are close to turning a profit on revenue from the other half and Starlink subscriptions.

[pixl97]

When it comes to launching other payloads, there is very little competition out there. Falcon 9 has proven itself itself very reliable and first stage reusability has put them in the place where they can always be under the competitors costs (but not too much under).

[leto_ii]

Did wsj wisen up to our archive.today trick?

[az226]

Gifting an unlocked article: https://www.wsj.com/tech/behind-the-curtain-of-elon-musks-se...

[pavon]

Here is a shorter Reuters article on the subject for those without a WSJ subscription: https://www.reuters.com/business/elon-musks-spacex-turns-pro...

[enjoytheview]

I'm using an extension called "Bypass Paywalls Clean", haven't updated it in a very longe while and it still works, looks like the current versions is here: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

[skyyler]

Guess I won't be reading their articles anymore.

[josefresco]

Yandex has it (link in my other comment)

[seatac76]

Yeah they did hasn’t been working today.

[reso]

Isn't most of this Starlink, which is basically SpaceX self-dealing? Can someone point me to a breakdown of launches and customers?

[wmf]

I don't think they can book Starlink launches as revenue. Of course Starlink has >$1B of legitimate subscriber revenue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

[pixl97]

https://spaceexplored.com/2023/08/11/spacex-launches-2023/

It appears somewhere around 60-70% of the launches are their own missions. This said nothing about costs though.

Still one company matching the rocket launches of the rest of the world is pretty impressive.

[01100011]

Is there a breakdown of where the money came from? How much is coming from Starlink, and how much money are they losing?

[bmitc]

Are there reporting requirements that separate actual revenue, my term for revenue from private parties, and revenue from government grants and contracts? What is the percentage of SpaceX's "revenue" that comes from government grants and contracts?

[stephenitis]

Is there a way for a mortal to buy or invest into SpaceX or are we just waiting for an IPO eventually?

[Laremere]

Go work for them on a position that has equity as part of the compensation.

Otherwise, I doubt it. Elon has been pretty vocal about regretting making Tesla public. Additionally SpaceX as a company is oriented around putting humans on mars. Until that happens, I expect a supermajority of ownership would be against the profit seeking motives that an IPO creates.

Short of investing in them, you could look for companies in industries that are likely to benefit from cheaper space access. Might have an easier time there.

[MR4D]

SpaceX is the second biggest holding in The Private Shares Fund [0].

This is an Interval Fund - effectively a mutual fund except that you can only sell it one day per quarter due to limited liquidity.

[0] - https://privatesharesfund.com/portfolio/

[martythemaniak]

Accredited Investors can invest via Special Purpose Vehicles when SpaceX is raising a round, or buy secondary shares if they know of anyone selling (sometimes these types of secondary offerings are listed on AngelList). A few years ago I saw someone on Twitter organizing an SPV to participate in their funding round at the time and the minimum commitment was $250K.

Mortality Assessments are left as an exercise for the reader.

[imkevinxu]

It's available on https://sandhillmarkets.com/

[paxys]

If you mean is there a website where you can click some buttons and acquire shares then no, it isn't traded on any public market.

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.

[chasd00]

you could open a welding supply store in Brownsville. Any investment in Brownsville TX is an investment in SpaceX pretty much. That whole area has been transformed.

[IshKebab]

There's no point investing in it now. Everyone knows they are doing amazingly well and are hugely valuable. It's not a secret.

[more_corn]

There is a secondary market for privately held shares.

[archo]

https://archive.is/e0bnu

[quest88]

Did their profits increase? Elon claimed reusable rockets would be orders of magnitude cheaper. Is that statement true?

[oldgradstudent]

How are Starlink launches accounted for?

Are they considered revenue? Capex? Expenses?

I guess it depends on the exact corporate structure.

[hallqv]

Incredible to double revenue YoY on that level. Elon and Spacex team are truly extraordinary.

[misiti3780]

Half of hacker news thinks Elon is some random evil idiot who is got really lucky twice.

[htss2013]

Isn't it amazing that you can become the richest person in the world by building companies that lose money? By lose money I mean all money ever put into the company versus profits made.

The idea of creating a profitless company that somehow makes you personally rich used to be thought of as a fluke. Yes it's possible but it shouldn't happen and aside from extreme luck it won't.

Something has changed. Losing money and getting rich anyway has gone from fluke to something else, and it feels like we are lying about how the game really works.

[7e]

Elon's MO has always been to lose more money than competitors are willing to, then brag about how advanced they are compared to everyone else. New technologies are always unprofitable. There is no magic to what SpaceX has done, or is doing. Only a willingness to grift, sell, and spend.

Losing money makes everything easy. Competitors don’t play that game.

[inemesitaffia]

Definitely Orwell.

Profits are indeed unprofitable