alt Hacker News"What should a company that launches 98% of the world's non government tonnage to space (80% if you include the Chinese government) be valued at ?"
The TAM of that is under $10 billion. So even owning that entire market shouldn't get you anywhere near a trillion. Then factor in the development cost of starship which has been going on forever and still hasn't even made it to orbit.
Even the IPO filing isn't claiming the value comes from the rockets but from data centers in space which seems questionable. The real cash cow right now is Starlink but they aren't leaning into that heavily because those numbers also indicate that revenue growth might be stalling out.
If you just look at the pure numbers the case is very weak. No reason to change the inclusion rules. In fact I'd argue they never should change the inclusion rules. Let the market find a price first. Index funds are supposed to be boring and track the market. Including any recent IPO just adds chaos beyond simply tracking the overall market. It's trivial to buy some SpaceX if one wants and unlike selling your entire fund holding either doesn't trigger a taxable event at all or it's a much smaller one if you cannot avoid it.
I am not looking at the "pure" numbers, and many investors do not, they look at potential. They look at what the possibilities are. If you believe that space will be a significant part of the economy in 20 years, and that SpaceX will be a large participant, the current numbers do not mean a lot, this is not a large established company in a static industry. In 20 years the market cap of just the US could very well be $200T, if space is only 10% of that, there is $20T of valuation for space, and that is just US.
Google when it ipo'd about 20 years ago had a market cap of $23B. It is now close to $5T. Even if it went over 10x overvalued at $230B when it ipo'd, it would still have been a good investment. That is because the internet became a large part of our economy, and Google is a major player.
If you really want to compare the two, Google had a market cap/revenue of $2B/$2.7B, SpaceX is currently $1.8T/$20B, or about 10x the ratio of Google back then.
Yeah, very pricey. Crazy ? Not sure. Do I like the valuation ? No. Would I buy more SpaceX than what will be in my equity ETF ? No. But I am not unhappy that I will own a piece when it comes out. Do I like the change in rules ? Absolutely not, but that is just the way it is. The market, over time, is, and always be a lot smarter than I am.