Tweet

Pierre Lionnet

11 Oct, 9 tweets, 3 min read

According to this video, there are historic shareholders in #SpaceX that are monetising their investment in SpaceX by peddling it in small bits to small cheque investors.

1/9

The youtuber shares his story, how he was approached by a "buddy" from a Tesla investors group to partake in the opportunity to buy SpaceX shares, "this is the opportunity of a lifetime", but it is not "official" and comes with unusual conditions attached. Let's have a look.
2/9

Condition 1) invest at the blink of an eye without any information "you have to wire the money in 2 days" without "any documentation" attached to the investment "no powerpoint from SpaceX", nothing, "i didn't even see the numbers"
3/9

Condition 2) invest with no guarantee that you are buying SpaceX stock "you're wiring money to some back account with no proof of anything" - "like, I'm not even sure I bought into SpaceX"
4/9

Condition 3) The deal is at "420$/share with a 20% carry and 1% upfront fee" meaning that "20% of the profit over the 420$/share will go the people who sold me this" - this seems rather typical of the Two & Twenty fee arrangement. investopedia.com/terms/t/two_an…
5/9

For this investor "it looked legit, it looked reputable" so he explains that he eventually took a 200k$ private loan with his "mentor", "at a reasonable rate", to fund this investment.
6/9

SpaceX is an unlisted company, and is only allowed to sell shares to accredited investors. The mechanism described in this video is very unusual. I am no specialist, but I wonder how it can be legal to sell unregistered stock like this.
7/9
investopedia.com/terms/a/accred…

I wonder whether this youtuber is "financially sophisticated" enough to justify a reduced need for regulatory protection? He eventually got himself in 200k$ debt (admittedly more than his current portfolio value) just to buy SpaceX stock. With no guarantee of any sort.
8/9

He seems to be very enthusiastic though, so all good for him. It would be interesting to know how many such opportunities are being offered on SpaceX stock.
9/9

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More from @LionnetPierre

Pierre Lionnet

@LionnetPierre

7 Sep

@SpaceX

We have modelized the economic equation of @SpaceX as a launch service provider (leaving aside Dragon, Starship and Starlink) with a view to uncover its cost and profit drivers. The idea was to use Falcon 9 as a benchmark for testing the economics of launcher Reusability. 1/18

The full research paper is available at linkedin, please read it to understand the assumptions and limitations. The key findings and highlights are posted in this thread. 2/18
linkedin.com/posts/eurospac…

We find that there is a very strong correlation between gross profit and launch cadence in launcher economics, in other words: without a sufficient volume of launch the launcher cannot be profitable, reusable or not. 3/18

Read 18 tweets

Pierre Lionnet

@LionnetPierre

25 Aug

I think that I need to discuss launch costs (again), because I keep reading the same bullshit such as: "Over the past decade, launch costs have been lowered by an order of magnitude, thus laying the foundation for the emergence of a new, expansive space economy." 1/9

This assertion from "an integrated strategic and financial services boutique" is wrong because "launch costs" have not been lowered by "an order of magnitude" - furthermore, as all economists know, the price elasticity of launch demand remains an elusive subject. 2/9

So what is launch cost? In its simplest form it is the unit price of a launcher. Once eliminating the Space Shuttle from the series, the trend looks like this. We can see that in average the launcher unit prices have decreased by a factor 2 to 3 in 30 years. 3/9

Read 9 tweets

Pierre Lionnet

@LionnetPierre

23 Aug

How big is 'the space economy'? Confronted with endless discussions I decided to publish a paper on linkedin to discuss the matter, from an economist perspective. Please read the full paper. The highlights are provided in the thread below. 1/7
linkedin.com/posts/eurospac…

The space economy in 2020 was about 300 B$ in value. This value is assessed by consolidating the revenues between the upstream and the midstream players, and only considers the measurable value of the induced markets (in the downstream). 2/7

The infrastructure market originates with a demand for space systems supported by a revenue base worth 125B (50+60+15). The demand is supported by two different drives: Public demand with resources worth 110B and commercial initiative worth 15B. 3/7

Read 7 tweets

Pierre Lionnet

@LionnetPierre

2 Aug

@SpireGlobal

I have had a look at the SEC filings for @SpireGlobal, and I tried to understand what was the unit cost of the Spire satellites. Not an easy task... a thread. 1/16

In the SEC registration documents you can find a table listing the company property value and the related D&A. There I see that 'Satellites in service' represent 26,2M$ (p. F-43) 2/16
sec.gov/Archives/edgar…

@SpireGlobal

Let me assume that 'Satellites in service' are only those 3 years old or less in 2020, i.e. 62 satellites at end 2020. That is giving me a value per satellite in orbit of 420k$, launch included. But how much did @SpireGlobal pay for launch? 3/16

Read 20 tweets

Pierre Lionnet

@LionnetPierre

27 Jul

@RocketLab

What's going on at @RocketLab? Apart from a seemingly toxic work environment, two recently published financial reports give us a hint of @RocketLab economics and how it is losing money consistently on every launch, despite NZ government financial support. A thread. 1/14

@RocketLab

First a look at the financials of @RocketLab USA and of @ Rocketlab NZ in USD, and in NZD (in 2020 1 NZD=0,63 USD) 2/14

@Rocketlab

The notes to the NZ financial statements explain that @Rocketlab NZ provides services at a margin cost to the USA parent company. And indeed we have 66 MUSD worth of expenditures at @RocketLab US that match the 90 MNZD worth of revenues of @RocketLab NZ (at 2020 rates). 3/14

Read 18 tweets

Pierre Lionnet

@LionnetPierre

23 Mar

A thread: Newspace companies founding chronology is it a typical hype cycle? 1/13

Among the easiest information points to find about newspace companies is the founding date. I thought it would be interesting to create a chronological map of the upstream and midstream companies in my list, and align it with the current level of employment in the companies. 2/13

This last bit of information is of course less easy to find, to the point that it may seems that employment figures are a taboo in the start-up environment. 3/13

Read 15 tweets

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