Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 11/27/2017 08:09 pmEvaluations are complex. They encompass both the predicted revenue total over a significant period of time like 10 years plus the profit margins that would occur on those revenues.Current evaluation of $21B is all about the launch business and the ~20% profit margin from such. But Starlink could bump the revenue from the ~$1.5B/year into at least the $3B/year range. But the profit margin on comm sats industry is as high as 50% (see SES revenue and profit data). This could bloom the corporate value to above $50B once Starlink starts operating and shows a healthy increasing subscriber numbers. But we are going to have to wait and see how successful Starlink will become since it is dependent on a very wide and large customer base acceptance.It all hinges on costs of deployment and operation with the acceptable prices for a large enough customer base to generate a large enough revenue to cover the large fixed costs of deployment and operation. Profits could be small <10% margin to very large >75% margin.Believe the $21B valuation was post-Google/Fidelity investment which considered the potential of a constellation adding to revenue. Launch services only valuation should be closer to the floor value of $5B quoted in the article or the $10B valuation just prior to the above funding. This latest valuation considers the significantly increased scope of the constellation (I think) as well as the benefits of lowered cost deployment of the spacecraft due to progress with reusability. No one can be certain of the success (or failure) in SpaceX executing on such a huge rebuilding of the internet and wideband communications, so the upper numbers indicate upside potential, and the lowest number indicates that this is anything but a sure thing... basically a roll of the dice at this point. Anyway, since stock is not public, this is mostly a thought experiment.
Evaluations are complex. They encompass both the predicted revenue total over a significant period of time like 10 years plus the profit margins that would occur on those revenues.Current evaluation of $21B is all about the launch business and the ~20% profit margin from such. But Starlink could bump the revenue from the ~$1.5B/year into at least the $3B/year range. But the profit margin on comm sats industry is as high as 50% (see SES revenue and profit data). This could bloom the corporate value to above $50B once Starlink starts operating and shows a healthy increasing subscriber numbers. But we are going to have to wait and see how successful Starlink will become since it is dependent on a very wide and large customer base acceptance.It all hinges on costs of deployment and operation with the acceptable prices for a large enough customer base to generate a large enough revenue to cover the large fixed costs of deployment and operation. Profits could be small <10% margin to very large >75% margin.
(Reuters) - Elon Musk-led SpaceX has raised $100 million by selling shares, in an extension to a financing round earlier this year that raised up to $350 million, a regulatory filing showed on Monday.
This might fit in here:Quote(Reuters) - Elon Musk-led SpaceX has raised $100 million by selling shares, in an extension to a financing round earlier this year that raised up to $350 million, a regulatory filing showed on Monday.https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-financing/rocket-maker-spacex-raises-another-100-million-idUSKBN1DR2PV
In 2015 SpaceX purchased $255M in Solar City Bonds. https://electrek.co/2017/04/14/tesla-solar-bonds-elon-musk-spacex/ It is still believed that these bonds in some form still exist in a converted or as matured bonds. Which would have a cash value of around $280M today. Add to that the recent $450 in investment cash in 2017 as well as another $250M/year in operating margin for the launch 18 launches) and Dragon (3 dragon) operations gives a total of cash on hand of about $980M (or more). There is an unknown amount of cash in their operating account plus where the other almost $1B in investment made in 2015 went to? The unknown part is how much of this cash has been allocated or spent on the multitude of projects: pads, BFR, and Starlink. If a significant amount of that $1B still is unspent then SpaceX has sufficient funds to maintain it's fast paced development of both Starlink, and BFR even while finishing up the installation of the new pad at Boca Chica. Note: Pads are not supper expensive for SpaceX. SLC-4E cost under $100M initially but since upgrades has possibly pushed the total spent on it to just over $100M. Boca Chica to be a from ground up pad will be at least as expensive as SLC-4E but not a lot more. Probably under $200M total. Budgets for 2018 and 2019 for BC work would be about $70M each year with possible about $30-50M in 2017.BFR spending looks to be at the moment at a rate of $160M/year. (Although AF funded $40M in 2017 and will fund another $33M in 2018 for Raptor).So the cash flow could look something like this:Balance$980M$950M - $30M 2017 Boca Chica$830M - $120M 2017 BFR (SpaceX spending above that of AF funds)$730M - $100M 2017 Starlink development (prototypes plus other expenditures)$1090M + $360M 2018 operating margin for launch (25 launches) and Dragon (5 Dragon flights) operations$1020M - $70M 2018 Boca Chica$890M - $130M 2018 BFR (SpaceX spending above that of AF funds)$590M - $300M 2018 Starlink development/production (production sats build (100+ sats) plus other expenditures)$950M + $360M 2019 operating margin for launch (25 launches) and Dragon (5 Dragon flights) operations$880M - $70M 2019 Boca Chica$650M - $250M 2019 BFR $350M - $300M 2019 Starlink production (production sats build (500+ sats) plus other expenditures)$100M - $250M 2019 8 Starlink launch deployments (~256 sats)$470M + $360M 2020 operating margin for launch (25 launches) and Dragon (5 Dragon flights) operations$220M - $250M 2020 BFR$-80M - $300M 2020 Starlink production (production sats build (500+ sats) plus other expenditures)$-470M - $390M 2020 8 Starlink launch deployments (~380 sats)What this basically shows is that even if there is no more of that rest that $1B available SpaceX cash situation is fine until 2020. If SpaceX can get past 2020 then the Starlink revenue will reduce the negative spending surplus amounts for Starlink deployment. Possibly enough to completely cover all Starling costs in 2021. Leaving only BFR to charge against the operating margin of F9/Dragon launches
I THINK Musk may spin off a separate Starlink company that manufactures, launches and perhaps operates satellites. Sell shares to his VC and corporate buddies but still stay private. He won't be as concerned about maintaining voting control as it does not affect the Mars goal.I believe he could raise plenty to fund the building and launching of Starlink. Starlink corp would buy F9, BFR satellite launches as a bulk discount price, still profitable to SpaceX. Cash flow problem solved, assuming SpaceX performs.
Quote from: gongora on 12/09/2017 04:44 pmWhile hosted payloads could be a future source of income, you may want to recall Iridium specifically designed their sats to host other payloads and then had a lot of trouble selling the space, they ended up basically setting up a subsidiary to own a bunch of them.The question is what was the lease price for the hosted payload? It is all about the lease price. It has to be cheap or you will have almost entirely empty spaces. The prices must be less than the costs of current average launch costs for cubesats. If you cannot offer these builders a cheaper alternative then you will not sell/rent spaces.Added:Iridium allocated 210kg for hosted payloads 1/3 of the total sat weight. This is almost as much as the Starlink proposed 1st generation sat of 380kg. Trying to sell such large space is not likely to find a lot of customers. That is because the number of customers out there are geometrically inverse related to size as is the totals of numbers and weight of all the possible hosted payloads based on their size is inversely related. So if you go after the small hosted payloads you will likely get a higher fill rate than if you go after larger ones and so probably even make more income.In the possible near term <10 years market offering large hosted payload space is not likely to result in good results.
While hosted payloads could be a future source of income, you may want to recall Iridium specifically designed their sats to host other payloads and then had a lot of trouble selling the space, they ended up basically setting up a subsidiary to own a bunch of them.
Cross post from other Starlink thread to be able to discuss the market potential for hosted payloads on Starlink.Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 12/09/2017 04:56 pmQuote from: gongora on 12/09/2017 04:44 pmWhile hosted payloads could be a future source of income, you may want to recall Iridium specifically designed their sats to host other payloads and then had a lot of trouble selling the space, they ended up basically setting up a subsidiary to own a bunch of them.The question is what was the lease price for the hosted payload? It is all about the lease price. It has to be cheap or you will have almost entirely empty spaces. The prices must be less than the costs of current average launch costs for cubesats. If you cannot offer these builders a cheaper alternative then you will not sell/rent spaces.Added:Iridium allocated 210kg for hosted payloads 1/3 of the total sat weight. This is almost as much as the Starlink proposed 1st generation sat of 380kg. Trying to sell such large space is not likely to find a lot of customers. That is because the number of customers out there are geometrically inverse related to size as is the totals of numbers and weight of all the possible hosted payloads based on their size is inversely related. So if you go after the small hosted payloads you will likely get a higher fill rate than if you go after larger ones and so probably even make more income.In the possible near term <10 years market offering large hosted payload space is not likely to result in good results.The questions are:What is the size of the market for hosted payloads keyed to the sizes of the hosted payloads?What are the prices that customers are willing to pay for hosted payloads?What are the sizes needed for certain sensor types?The basic item is that a comm sat is a logical host for hosted payloads in that it offers significant data communications support as naturally part of the capability of the sat. Therefor able to sell a significant data rate (Iridium Prime hosted payload support is 1Mb/s to 20Mb/s). Starlink's could be easily up to 1Gb/s. To give an example how much data 1Mb/s represents a UHD camera running at 1/15th frame rate produces a 1Mb/s data stream. So a full rate or even over clocked frame rate 60 frames /second UHD cammera would only be a 30Mb/s data stream.So what would the business case for Starlink to have hosted payloads look like?How much income would be likely to be garnered from such?
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 12/09/2017 06:56 pmCross post from other Starlink thread to be able to discuss the market potential for hosted payloads on Starlink.Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 12/09/2017 04:56 pmQuote from: gongora on 12/09/2017 04:44 pmWhile hosted payloads could be a future source of income, you may want to recall Iridium specifically designed their sats to host other payloads and then had a lot of trouble selling the space, they ended up basically setting up a subsidiary to own a bunch of them.The question is what was the lease price for the hosted payload? It is all about the lease price. It has to be cheap or you will have almost entirely empty spaces. The prices must be less than the costs of current average launch costs for cubesats. If you cannot offer these builders a cheaper alternative then you will not sell/rent spaces.Added:Iridium allocated 210kg for hosted payloads 1/3 of the total sat weight. This is almost as much as the Starlink proposed 1st generation sat of 380kg. Trying to sell such large space is not likely to find a lot of customers. That is because the number of customers out there are geometrically inverse related to size as is the totals of numbers and weight of all the possible hosted payloads based on their size is inversely related. So if you go after the small hosted payloads you will likely get a higher fill rate than if you go after larger ones and so probably even make more income.In the possible near term <10 years market offering large hosted payload space is not likely to result in good results.The questions are:What is the size of the market for hosted payloads keyed to the sizes of the hosted payloads?What are the prices that customers are willing to pay for hosted payloads?What are the sizes needed for certain sensor types?The basic item is that a comm sat is a logical host for hosted payloads in that it offers significant data communications support as naturally part of the capability of the sat. Therefor able to sell a significant data rate (Iridium Prime hosted payload support is 1Mb/s to 20Mb/s). Starlink's could be easily up to 1Gb/s. To give an example how much data 1Mb/s represents a UHD camera running at 1/15th frame rate produces a 1Mb/s data stream. So a full rate or even over clocked frame rate 60 frames /second UHD cammera would only be a 30Mb/s data stream.So what would the business case for Starlink to have hosted payloads look like?How much income would be likely to be garnered from such?The other question that springs to my mind is if the market would be better served by having dedicated satellites for hosting. Make them as similar to the Starlink sats as possible: common bus, common dispenser interface, etc. The reasons for doing this might be more business model based than technical. You could also potentially configure them with a higher initial fuel load to reach a wider range of orbits even if launched from a dispenser full of normal starling sats.
Peter B. de Selding @pbdesSpanish govt Paz civil/military radar sat, built by @AirbusSpace, is readied for airlift from Spain to Calif/VAFB for Jan 30 @SpaceX mission. 1,400-kg Paz to launch w/ 2 SpaceX microsats that will demo future broadband constellation & provide ITU registration (BIU).6:55 AM - Dec 19, 2017
With the first 2 test sats going up late Jan/ early Feb, I expect the first set of production sats to be launched at about +18 months. That includes 6 months of testing with these 2 sats to delve out the problems and solutions and software needed for the production models. Then 1 year for a combined very short design period with manufacturing gearing up with the first 20-30 sats delivered around Jun 2019 with launch Aug 2019. Then launches every 2 months of additional sets with the duration between shortening by a few days each cycle until launches occurring at just less than 1 month duration.Operational point (800+ sats) is reached around Mid to late 2021 based on how many sats can be launched on each F9 flight (20 [latest date] or 32 [earlier date]).
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 12/22/2017 06:22 pmWith the first 2 test sats going up late Jan/ early Feb, I expect the first set of production sats to be launched at about +18 months. That includes 6 months of testing with these 2 sats to delve out the problems and solutions and software needed for the production models. Then 1 year for a combined very short design period with manufacturing gearing up with the first 20-30 sats delivered around Jun 2019 with launch Aug 2019. Then launches every 2 months of additional sets with the duration between shortening by a few days each cycle until launches occurring at just less than 1 month duration.Operational point (800+ sats) is reached around Mid to late 2021 based on how many sats can be launched on each F9 flight (20 [latest date] or 32 [earlier date]).I think it may be sooner than 18 months for the first production, we'll see. SpaceX iterates fast so there may be another pait to test with prior to production start.