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There is a lot happening at Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA, TSLA:US). It went from smashing records to enter S&P 500 last year, to pushing founder Elon Musk to the top of the world's wealthiest peoples’ list in January 2021, to turning heads with its earnings report and Bitcoin revenue a few weeks ago.
Now, investors can’t wait to see more of Mr Musk’s ventures hit the public trading platform.
Take Space Exploration Technologies Corp, aka SpaceX, for example. The futuristic tech firm aims at reducing space transportation costs and making colonization of Mars possible. Meanwhile, people on Earth are wondering if the company will ever go public.
Mr Musk, while discussing the possibility of SpaceX going public over a string of tweets last year, had indicated that its subsidiary Starlink could be the one to have an initial public offering (IPO).
When Is Starlink IPO Happening?
Starlink is Mr Musk’s ambitious project to provide satellite internet services to earthlings. The internet constellation made quite a buzz in October last year after SpaceX organized a beta test in some parts of Montana, US, to examine Starlink’s connectivity.
Mr Musk has reiterated that while he has IPO plans for Starlink, it will possible only in the distant future. As recently as February 2021, the engineer-turned-entrepreneur tweeted saying Starlink will head for an IPO when the company “can predict [its] cash flow reasonably well”.
As of now, there is no official confirmation about an IPO size or price from SpaceX.
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Starlink IPO A Good Idea?
According to the data provided on Crunchbase, SpaceX raised a total of about US$ 7.5 billion in proceeds over 39 rounds of funding, with the latest one being held as recently as last month.
SpaceX is said to have pooled in about US$ 850 million in February this year, then again US$ 1.2 billion in equity financing two month later in April. At the moment, the company is reported to have a market value of US$ 74 billion.
What these fundings point at is that SpaceX is generating quite a bit of cash at a fast rate, and a chunk of it is going into the Starlink project.
The space tech firm is said to be launching some 200 satellites each month to grow the Starlink constellation in the low Earth orbit. At the moment, it is reportedly large enough to send steady internet connectivity to certain parts of the world.
If all goes well, SpaceX could hit its target of providing satellite internet services across the globe by the end of this year.
SpaceX is expected to raise more capital for its Starlink constellation project in the near future. And some market commentators believe that one of the upcoming funding rounds could be an IPO to set Starlink apart as a separate company.
