{"id":404758,"date":"2026-04-18T07:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T07:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/404758\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T07:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T07:41:08","slug":"scaramuccis-spacex-argument-doesnt-add-up-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/404758\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaramucci\u2019s SpaceX argument doesn\u2019t add up \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Anthony Scaramucci \u2013 the financier and former White House communications director who has become a Trump critic \u2013 offers what is meant to sound like caution about the reported <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/spacex\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/spacex\/\">SpaceX<\/a> IPO. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The \u201ccult of personality around <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/elon-musk\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/elon-musk\/\">Elon Musk<\/a>\u201d, he writes, has created \u201can excessive premium that is off the charts\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">True, only he then proceeds to justify investing in precisely those terms, talking about Musk\u2019s ability to turn science fiction into fact. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Musk idolatry aside, the most revealing line is Scaramucci\u2019s invocation of Amazon. \u201cI missed Amazon. $10,000 (\u20ac8,479) invested in the Amazon IPO on May 15th, 1997 would be worth almost $20 million today. The guys who bought it were right. I wasn\u2019t. I\u2019m not making that mistake again\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">There\u2019s one problem with this line of reasoning. Amazon, which is worth $2.7 trillion today, floated at a $438 million valuation in 1997. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">SpaceX is being discussed in the context of a $1.75 trillion-$2 trillion valuation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Put another way, a $2 trillion valuation is about 4,566 times as much as $438 million. Scaramucci\u2019s analogy requires a remarkably elastic view of what counts as \u201cthe same mistake\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Information reports that SpaceX lost almost $5 billion in 2025 on revenues of $18.5 billion. These are not the numbers one associates with a $2 trillion company. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">SpaceX might well go on to achieve all kinds of amazing feats, but is there anything left to price in? <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Robotaxis on Mars, perhaps, or something similar farther down the roadmap? <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Additionally, the Financial Times reports that SpaceX has considered allowing some existing shareholders to sell on day one, bypassing the standard 180-day lock-up. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Combined with plans for a major retail allocation, it raises the unseemly prospect of informed insiders being allowed dump their shares on ordinary investors buying into the story at peak enthusiasm. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Investors should be careful. Those looking for the next Amazon may reasonably question whether it begins life at $2 trillion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Scaramucci \u2013 the financier and former White House communications director who has become a Trump critic \u2013&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[3468,153799,605,61,60,82,247,53956],"class_list":{"0":"post-404758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-anthony-scaramucci","10":"tag-elon-musk","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-space-x"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}