Rocket Lab (RKLB 1.71%) stock jumped another 4.4% through 12:35 p.m. ET on Monday.
You can thank the friendly analysts at Morgan Stanley for that. Because this morning, MS quadrupled its price target on Rocket Lab to $68 per share.
Image source: Rocket Lab.
How to buy "an earlier-stage SpaceX "
Rocket Lab is coming off a great week in which it announced five new rocket launches for customers in Japan -- three rockets for Japan's iQPS, and two more rockets for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. As Rocket Lab's customers order more and more launches, Morgan Stanley calls the company "an earlier-stage alternative to SpaceX," as The Fly reports.
Just how early stage is Rocket Lab?
Well, the company's Electron rocket is pretty tiny, a bit smaller than the Falcon 1 rocket that SpaceX first launched in 2008. Granted, Falcon 1 launched only once (successfully), whereas Electron is now Rocket Lab's workhorse, with 70 successful missions under its belt. Rocket Lab has a bigger rocket on tap, the Neutron, expected to launch later this year, and it's reusable like SpaceX's Falcon 9 -- which conducted its first successful landing in 2015.
By my math, that puts Rocket Lab somewhere between where SpaceX was in the 2008-to-2015 period -- 10 to 17 years ago.
Is Rocket Lab stock a buy?
But here's the thing: In 2015, SpaceX was valued at only $10 billion -- largely on the potential of its Starlink satellite internet program. Rocket Lab doesn't have a satellite constellation, however. It also has yet to prove Neutron can fly, and land, and be reused. Yet, Rocket Lab stock already costs north of $30 billion -- 3x what SpaceX cost at this stage of its development.
My conclusion: Rocket Lab is probably 3x overpriced today. I still own the stock, but I won't be buying more.
