Currently, the company has an estimated 100,000 users spread out over 14 countries. On December 16, 2016, Google stock was trading at $809 per share, but that figure has increased exponentially. Get a daily email with the top market-moving news in bullet point format, for free. Today’s stock market has not been friendly to IPOs, so there’s no reason to rush it. When Musk decides to list its shares, I would expect Starlink’s IPO to command a valuation north of $100 billion. Yes, SpaceX currently owns and operates Starlink, but Starlink is expected to become its own company in the near future.
The bottom line: Starlink is not a publicly traded company but there are plans for an IPO date in the coming years
- Starlink’s ability to provide internet access in the absence of established infrastructure came to the fore during the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022.
- Starlink is a division of SpaceX, which is also a privately owned entity.
- This allows them to stay in orbit longer, even at these lower distances from Earth.
- In 2019, the first Starlink satellite fleet was launched into orbit.
If we assume the average customer pays Starlink $100 per month, its 2 million customers are currently generating $200 million per month in revenue, or $2.4 billion per year. Bank of America (BAC) invested Day trade the world $250 million at a valuation of ~$30 billion in November 2018. At today’s valuation, this investment is likely worth around $1.15 billion. While there’s no way to invest directly in Starlink or SpaceX right now, here are a few ideas for gaining indirect exposure.
The Chinese government also complained to the United Nations after Starlink satellites almost hit the Chinese Space Station in low orbit. The government had complained that Starlink was making limited low orbit space overcrowded, and released a whitepaper calling for the destruction of Starlink satellites. Elon Musk continues to impress us with his innovative ideas that provide us with a glimpse into what the future might be like. Tesla brought self-driving EVs into existence and SpaceX is working toward making Mars inhabitable. Starlink is backed by SpaceX, a company founded by billionaire Elon Musk.
Starlink Could Make Elon Musk a Trillionaire—How to Invest in It
Despite several high profile disputes, Starlink continues to launch new satellites into low orbit in a bid to provide internet coverage to the majority of the earth’s surface. The core aim of Starlink is to establish a low cost, high speed internet service for people all over the world. Starlink is a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) company. Both of the companies are currently private and not publicly traded.
Bloomberg bursts Elon Musk’s bubble
Founded in 1993, The Motley Fool is a financial services company dedicated to making the world smarter, happier, and richer. The Motley Fool reaches millions of people invest in the united states every month through our premium investing solutions, free guidance and market analysis on Fool.com, top-rated podcasts, and non-profit The Motley Fool Foundation. On the one hand, rural broadband download speeds in the U.S. average 45.9 Mb/s, with some locations pinging in the low single digits. And the average cost for this service is about $50 — roughly the same price charged for much faster internet service in major metropolitan areas. If Starlink can deliver on its promise to provide 100 Mb/s speeds to all comers, at a $99 monthly price tag, its service should at the very least be competitive with alternative providers on a dollars-per-megabit basis. Once it becomes fully operational, Starlink will offer internet access from virtually anywhere on the planet.
Hiive allows you to buy shares directly from sellers, which may include company employees, founders, venture capital funds, hedge funds or angel investors. You can invest in SpaceX directly through Hiive, which is a marketplace for private, pre-IPO companies. If you’re a retail investor, don’t worry, there are a few indirect ways you can gain access to Starlink’s upside. Right now, it’s impossible for retail investors to buy Starlink stock before its IPO, but there may be a way for accredited investors to invest alongside the private equity firms who are getting in before everyone else. Starlink is expected to become profitable this year and has access to plenty of funding (more on that below).
But according to Payload’s Starlink forecast for 2024, the company will generate more than $6.8 billion in revenue this year — up more than 50% from $4.2 billion in 2023. And Starlink is hoping to generate operating profit margins of 60% on its revenue — $4.1 billion. Granted, it remains uncertain precisely how far we are away from this goal. It’s also anyone’s guess whether these numbers fit Elon Musk’s definition of how “reasonably predictable” this future is.
Together, these investments are worth $10.5 billion, or about 7% of SpaceX and Starlink. Investors can place bids and negotiate with sellers or accept their asking prices. While Starlink IPO rumors have been circulating, there is no clear indication it will happen soon. Still, there are ways for investors to buy Starlink stock in 2024, well before its IPO. As we have stated before, the service is designed for direct fixed connections to homes or businesses. I admit, in the past I’ve had my doubts about whether Starlink could grow as big as Musk wanted it to, or had the bandwidth to support all the traffic that Musk originally wanted to turn into revenue.
While the existing methods for gaining Starlink exposure are not ideal, investors will be pleased to know that SpaceX has announced that a Starlink IPO date will be set in the near future. The Starlink IPO is expected to take place in 2025, which will allow public investors to gain direct exposure to the company. Starlink’s ability to provide internet access in the absence of established infrastructure came to the fore during the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. The Russian military destroyed cell towers and fiber optic cables in Ukraine, and Starlink was then used to restore internet access to the country. Since then, the Chinese government has threatened to remove Starlink satellites from low orbit, citing its military applications as cause for concern. In 2015, Google poured a $1 billion investment into SpaceX, the company behind Starlink.
The body of each satellite is flat, and up to 60 of them can fit into one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets. Once put in orbit, a single large solar array comes out to power the satellite. The central portion includes four powerful antennas for internet transmissions.
To hear Elon Musk tell it, Starlink — the satellite internet business that SpaceX has been building for nearly a decade now — is generating cash and well on its way to profitability. SpaceX’s President, Gwynne Shotwell, backs him up on this, and says that SpaceX as a whole began generating cash as far back as 2022, and reported positive profits at least once in 2023. Throw in a few cruise ships and airplanes providing global Starlink services — not to mention all the hardware revenue generated by 1.5 million users — and it’s probably safe to say that Starlink has now left the $3 billion mark far behind. According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, that’s even more revenue than SpaceX’s core launch services business generates. As things stand, the only way to gain investment exposure to Starlink is by gaining indirect exposure to its parent company SpaceX, which is also privately owned. As a result, investors can gain indirect exposure to SpaceX by investing in these trusts, and since Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, this would also provide exposure to Starlink.
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According to a Vox article, many astronomers have concerns that the plan to put as many as 12,000 or more Starlink satellites into orbit could cause a lot more light pollution, which could interfere with their Earth-bound telescopes. SpaceX says it works to reduce light pollution from those satellites, including experimenting with a dark coating on the surface. When SpaceX first launches a new set of satellites, you can briefly see them with the naked eye. When that happens, they become much less visible, but they could still be visible with the naked eye in certain circumstances, and certainly via telescopes.
Starlink isn’t quite there Trading sugar yet (which reinforces the CEO’s desire to reach “reasonably predictable” revenue before IPO’ing). Starlink still has a long way to go before reaching its eventual goal of generating $30 billion in annual revenue in 2025, and given the delayed start, it may take a few more years than originally planned for that to happen. Up, down or sideways, Tom has never lost enthusiasm for the future of blockchain. He believes that education is one of the most important hurdles for the industry to overcome and he enjoys playing his part as crypto pushes past barriers towards global adoption.
People who reside in places where the internet connection is nonexistent or unreliable can benefit from the services Starklink provides. That said, Starlink’s revenue and profitability (plus the lineup of private equity investors waiting for it to accept further funding) will allow Musk to delay the IPO until more favorable market conditions. Starlink’s download speeds are supposed to be up to 1Gbps, but again there’s no word on upload speeds. Therefore, it doesn’t look like Starlink will be faster than fiber. By comparison, the HughesNet service costs as much as $150 a month, with a 50GB high-speed data plan (at 25Mbps) and horrible latency that makes gaming impossible, and even tasks like streaming can be quite the chore. If you are in an area with open cells, Starlink’s standard service will run $120 a month, with a $599 equipment fee for the dish.