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The year was 1993, and Lockheed was without Martin, Northrop was without Grumman, and Boeing had not yet acquired McDonnell Douglas. The defense industry had a diverse set of suppliers, with over 50 defense primes competing for government contracts.
When Rocket Lab’s valuation matched that of Northrop’s on May 22nd—despite Rocket Lab having 60x less revenue—antennas went up. The company had another few days of bull before falling 30%+.
A similar trend was seen across space stocks, including BlackSky, Planet, Intuitive Machines, Firefly, and AST SpaceMobile, as the SpaceX IPO and general space hype take a breather.
SpaceX should be able to clear $100B in revenue by 2028, particularly when you consider the company is to reach $60B of annualized revenue by the end of this year (more on that later).
Planet Labs reported strong 42% YoY Q1 revenue growth last week.
Eighteen months ago, something strange happened in the space industry: everywhere you looked, satellite bus manufacturers (new, old, pivoted, or expanded into) started raising capital at astronomical levels and valuations.
SpaceX’s IPO prospectus is here.
BlackSky generated $21M of revenue in Q1, a 29% YoY decline.
Signal intelligence business HawkEye 360 IPO’d last week, raising $416M at a $2.4B valuation.
We cover terrestrial bottlenecks, cost analysis, the competitive landscape, and technical challenges.
