Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) just launched three rockets in less than 13 hours, a pretty incredible feat that’s led to a 6% bump in the company’s stock so far in Friday’s trading.
The company sent four astronauts to the International Space Station, carried a batch of commercial payloads into orbit, and launched a classified satellite for U.S. intelligence.
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So, what does all this mean for SpaceX’s business and its investors?
A quick trip to the space station
First up was NASA’s Crew-13 mission. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida carrying four astronauts in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule on Thursday, Oct. 1. The crew made it to the International Space Station in under eight hours — the quickest trip there by an American spacecraft ever.
“Yeah, we we got lucky this time,” said SpaceX’s director of the NASA Science and Dragon programs, Julianna Scheiman, adding, “That’s not to say it couldn’t happen again, and if we were to put space station in exactly the right spot for the right launch it could be this or even shorter durations, but this is close to the fastest it could be though.”
The crew will spend roughly six months aboard the station. The rocket’s first-stage booster successfully returned to earth, landed, and will be able to be used once again.
Commercial payloads and an AI prototype
The next flight, Transporter-18, carried 130 commercial payloads into orbit from California, including an AI prototype from Google’s Project Suncatcher, a program designed to test the feasibility of space-based data centers.
Of note, the reusable Falcon 9 booster was on its 25th flight.
A classified mission for U.S. intelligence
The final launch used SpaceX’s larger Falcon Heavy rocket to carry a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office — the agency responsible for U.S. intelligence satellites.
Obviously, much of the mission was kept under wraps, but it marked Falcon Heavy’s first launch for the agency. SpaceX landed both side boosters back in Florida. Its recovered boosters across the day’s three launches totaled four.
SpaceX by the numbers
While the focus of the last 24 hours has been on the company’s launch business, as of its most recent quarter, Connectivity, the segment that includes Starlink, remains the real cash cow. The unit brought in $4.3 billion in revenue and $1.7 billion in operating profit.
Space, on the other hand, reported a $542 million operating loss on $962 million in revenue. Of course, that’s a bit misleading. When the company sends up Starlink satellites on its own rockets, the Space unit doesn’t record revenue from the job. Connectivity marks the launch costs on its balance sheet and spreads the expense over time through depreciation.
The net effect is that Starlink looks much more profitable than it would be on its own, at the cost of making Launch look less so.
Finally, SpaceX’s AI unit recorded a $1.3 billion loss on $2.6 billion in sales. The picture here is rapidly shifting, however, with multiple major compute contracts coming online. Deals to rent out its considerable compute power with Anthropic, Alphabet, and other customers could bring in up to $3.4 billion per month once everything is running.
How profitable this compute push turns out to be depends on when the company can deliver on the promised compute and how much it spends doing so. The unit alone spent $15.8 billion in capital expenditures last quarter.
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Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
SpaceX Just Launched 3 Rockets in 13 Hours. Here’s What Investors Need to Know Right Now. was originally published by The Motley Fool