SpaceX Plans a Spinoff, IPO For Starlink Business 28
Thelasko shares a report from Bloomberg: Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to spin out and pursue a public offering of its budding space-internet business Starlink, giving investors a chance to buy into one of the most promising operations within the closely held company. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has already launched more than 240 satellites to build out Starlink, which will start delivering internet services to customers from space this summer, President Gwynne Shotwell said Thursday at a private investor event hosted by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Miami. "Right now, we are a private company, but Starlink is the right kind of business that we can go ahead and take public," said Shotwell, SpaceX's chief operating officer. "That particular piece is an element of the business that we are likely to spin out and go public."
Investors have to this point had limited ways to own a piece of SpaceX, which has become one of the most richly valued venture-backed companies in the U.S. by dominating the commercial rocket industry. It flies satellites into orbit for customers including the U.S. military, carries cargo to the International Space Station and aims to start flying NASA astronauts and high-paying tourists soon. But the rocket-launch business remains competitive and tough. Starlink and its ability to provide high-speed internet across the globe has helped private investors in SpaceX justify a roughly $33 billion valuation. Musk has long maintained that the parent is unlikely to go public until it is regularly ferrying people to Mars.
Investors have to this point had limited ways to own a piece of SpaceX, which has become one of the most richly valued venture-backed companies in the U.S. by dominating the commercial rocket industry. It flies satellites into orbit for customers including the U.S. military, carries cargo to the International Space Station and aims to start flying NASA astronauts and high-paying tourists soon. But the rocket-launch business remains competitive and tough. Starlink and its ability to provide high-speed internet across the globe has helped private investors in SpaceX justify a roughly $33 billion valuation. Musk has long maintained that the parent is unlikely to go public until it is regularly ferrying people to Mars.
Noo (Score:3)
Public is the worst for any business with a long term vision. Better to keep it private so that you have less scrutiny and fools up in your business. The last thing you need is idiots wanting quick returns on their investment. It's better to have long term patient investors than the quick money fools on wall street.
Re:Noo (Score:4, Insightful)
Public is the worst for any business with a long term vision. Better to keep it private so that you have less scrutiny and fools up in your business. The last thing you need is idiots wanting quick returns on their investment. It's better to have long term patient investors than the quick money fools on wall street.
Those "quick money fools" are the ones who'll pay for rapid scale-out of Starlink, meaning lots of launch profits for SpaceX while they retain full control over the only practical means to get those satellites into space. If anything it's those investors that should be afraid that SpaceX has them over a barrel, why wouldn't they take the lion's share of the profits themselves through launch pricing and leave Starlink with no more than a modest operating margin? This is why Musk is a billionaire, he might be a bit of a nerd too but no doubt he's a shrewd businessman. He makes up lots of hype but rarely actually throws away money on fool's errands.
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It's better to have long term patient investors than the quick money fools on wall street.
If you're a large financial firm who will be paying millions per month for a low-latency Starlink connection (Starlink's real customers), then you may well want to invest millions in the IPO to make sure you have a vote in how it will operate. After all, it's your competitive advantage at stake!
To whatever extent this is a move on Musk's part to scam a $billion or two out of investment banks with an IPO, Musk is my hero. After all, the best thing to do with "quick money fools" is take their money. And, h
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Kinda lol in this context (Score:2)
Funny you would say that in a discussion of a Musk company.
Tesla lost a lot of money every year from 2009 to 2018.l, generally losing more and more every year, up to $2.5 billion per year. For ten years. Not exactly short-term, gotta maximize profit this quarter. The enthusiasm for the company is unprecedented - the market values the stock as if Telsa is already one of the most successful companies of all time, and as if there is little risk that they won't continue to be hugely successful. Despite the fac
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Likely, Maybe, Someday (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that it would make sense to spin it off is far different from saying that they have specific plans to. I expect they'll wait at least until they're up and running with real customers.
Re:No use case for Starlink (Score:5, Insightful)
No use case
What in the holy hand grenade?!? Starlink (theoretically) offers lower latency links between basically any two points (over ~300 miles apart) on the globe, because light travels faster in open air/space than a fiber optic cable. That'd be worth serious cash money to stock markets, remote surgery, or other situations where low latency is king.
ANY possible use of current satellite technology would consider Starlink instead, for the same reason. Laggy interviews on your favorite news channel? Poor cell (hotspot) coverage on the mountain/island/glacier where you live? You live on the "last mile" and don't want to pay 6 figures to have a trunk brought out? All are viable use cases.
The specific pricing matters in individual cases, but I'd jump up and down on this where I live.
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I know you're modded down, but I gotta ask if you understand the fundamental premise of Starlink.
It is a constellation of satellites that are primarily ~210 miles / 340 km above the surface of the earth - NOT in 40,000km geosync orbits like current satellite internet providers. Can you justify your claim of "orders of magnitude" (being 10x, 100x, or 1000x) slower? And by slower, I am specifically referring to latency, as I did in my original post. NOT bandwidth - for which I don't have much credible info
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Unlike morons like you. I understand physics.
Unlikely seeing as you don't understand simple math! Or, maybe you can't read. But, most likely, you're a troll.
As others have said, these satellites are orbiting *very* low. That's mostly why they need tens of thousands of them. The first generation will have slightly better latency than typical cable connections. The next generation will include optical satellite to satellite links. Those links (in a near vacuum) will be faster than fiber optic cables. For long distances such as U.S. coast to
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There are so many things about Star Link that we don't know much about, but get me really curious.
SpaceX promised the FCC that these satelites would eventually burn up fully. This video by Mark Handley mentions that to allow the satelites to burn up fully, the current satelites don't actually have the lasers required for satelite-to-satelite communication. These lasers have silicon carbide parts that have to, by definition, resist heat.
https://youtu.be/m05abdGSOxY?t... [youtu.be]
Here is footage of the satelites from t
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Suppose they can get $50/month per subscriber. They can get most rural households who can't currently get broadband. A third of households in the USA don't have broadband. That's 100M people. Now the numbers I'm seeing from some quick research are inconsistent between people who don't have and can't get, and people vs. households, but suppose StarLink only gets 10M subscribers in the USA. That's $500M/month or $6B/year. And that's just the USA; they could easily double or triple that number.
But yes, t
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Ignore my stupid math error that doubles the satellite costs. Sorry. The analysis has enough guesses and rounding that the overall conclusion of "highly profitable" still stands. If they do go public, we'll get all the real numbers to do the real math.
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Given how close the fleet is to the surface of the earth, one satellite would pass over all 6 populated continents and could individually provide up/down link service. IE, the satellite overhead in North America right now will later be over Europe, then Asia, then sometime later South America & Australia. Since you need enough satellites to cover all of North America at one time, the ones not directly above there are dead weight (from the USA/Canada/Mexico viewpoint anyway) and can be utilized elsewhe
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If it costs $149.98 and saves a whole penny over Comcast I'll buy it to not deal with Comcast.
If it's faster than 25Mbps that's just a side bonus.
Makes sense. (Score:4, Interesting)
The majority of SpaceX investors can use this as an exit, hopefully making a good return on their investment in SpaceX.
Elon, meanwhile, could use the money to buy up the rest of SpaceX and go to Mars.
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As Iridium and Teledesic investors would tell you, investing in a satellite network usually doesn't pan out well for the stockholders.
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Space debris (Score:2)
What if the company goes bust or the shareholders don't want to invest in cleaning up space after the system is at the end of its lifespan? Who will clean up thousands of satellites?
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Customers on Mars? (Score:2)