In this podcast, Motley Fool analysts Rick Munarriz, Karl Thiel, and Tim Beyers:
- Talk about the possible SpaceX IPO.
- Debate the company's status as a Rule Breaker.
- Make a call on whether they'd buy the SpaceX IPO.
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A full transcript is below.
This podcast was recorded on Dec. 15, 2025.
Tim Beyers: Would you buy the SpaceX IPO? You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome Fools. I'm your host, Tim Byers, and with me are two old friends and teammates, Rick Pinares and Karl Teal. We've been on Rule Breakers together. Guys, give it a couple more years, and our tenure on Rule Breakers will be retirement age. That's real. Should we be signing up for AARP? I don't know. But we're looking at the youth today. I hope you're fully caffeinated, because we got to talk about SpaceX here and the prospective IPO. Bloomberg has reported that the company could go public at a $1.5 trillion valuation. Talk a bit more about that report, and then answer some mindset questions you sent us. But first, we need to start with the SpaceX news. Let's quickly review what we've heard. But I'm going to start with a question for each of you before I give you some data. What do you know about SpaceX? Karl start with you. What do you think this thing is?
Karl Thiel: SpaceX is obviously closely associated with Elon Musk. Certainly gets a lot of publicity for its rocket launches. Sometimes they go great, sometimes not so much, but they certainly capture a lot of attention. What maybe isn't quite as widely known is that about 70% of SpaceX's revenue comes from Starlink, and Starlink is the network of satellites that allows people to essentially make an Internet connection even when they are not near the infrastructure that usually allows that to happen here on firm Earth.
Tim Beyers: Yeah, it's satellite Internet. Rick, how about you? What's your indelible memory of SpaceX?
Rick Munarriz: Again, you think of the spaceships because that's what we see in the news, but Starlink is up to eight plus million subscribers now. It was just like a million just a few years ago. It's a fast-growing global telecom platform, so that's definitely a viable part of the story. The whole space part of it, there's payload to take up there, but frankly, I'm not 100% sold on the whole throwing AI data centers up into space or colonizing Mars when there's no Bachfront property, Tim. Tim, there's no Bachfront property on Mars. I think you need to know from the get go. My travel agent lied to me. But yeah, it is a very wide varied company with a lot of optionality, surprisingly enough, but it's not just one one-dimensional company that's just we launch spaceships into skies, and that's it.
Tim Beyers: Let's talk a little bit more about what this is. The closest comparable from a public market perspective, I think would probably be Rocket Lab, and Rocket Lab, is Ticker RKLB, is a much smaller company at a market cap of just about 30.3 billion as of this recording. SpaceX wants to go public if Bloomberg get to be believed at a market cap of 1.5 trillion with a T. That would be the biggest of all time, raising somewhere over $30 billion. There are three pieces to this business, and the most interesting one to me, you both mentioned the rocket launches. They do launches for NASA. For example, they do a lot of payloads, they get satellites up into space. They get paid for that. They get paid for Starlink, satellite Internet. But the thing that's most interesting to me, and I'm going to have a follow-up question about this for each of you, is this idea of the spaceship. The spaceship, which is you go up, you launch, and then you come back down and you land, and you have a reusable rocket. That is not something we have had in rocket science ever. Everybody's working on this. SpaceX is working on this. We hope that at least a couple Blue Origin is a competitor that's also working on this. But presumably, SpaceX thinks they can do this, that they can take down. I'm just looking at a number here which I found somewhat remarkable, that the payload launch cost is somewhere around, I believe it is $1,500. Here it is. I said spaceship. It's Starship. I got that wrong. Apologies, $1,500 per kilogram per payload. If you have a reusable rocket, if you have a reusable starship, they believe they could get that down to less than $100 per kilogram. That's insane. That's some serious economic power here. Given that, Rick, I'll start with you. SpaceX, This is a big IPO, but is it a rule breaker?
Rick Munarriz: If it can achieve that, of course. The whole Starship, formally known as Jefferson Airplane, Starship can actually get this to happen, obviously, the cost dynamics of everything and the fact that everything's reusable, it's a game changer, of course. But again, saying you want to get there and being able to actually prove you can do it are two different things. But it definitely would be a game changer, and it's how quickly can the competition catch up? Not that there's that many competitors doing this anyway. But I'm still skeptical. But definitely an interesting wrinkle, and again, turning this ceiling into a retractable roof sometimes.
Tim Beyers: Karl, let me give you some numbers and then the same question. I pulled these numbers. Bear in mind, this came from Gemini, so let's not call it perfect. These are estimates. But the sourcing that Gemini gives me is that in 2020, SpaceX had $1.4 billion in revenue and net loss, and a private market valuation of 44 billion. As of this year, the estimate is for $15.5 billion. Five years later, 1.4 billion to 15.5 billion, positive cash flow, and an 800 billion private market valuation. They want to go public at about double that private market valuation. Same thing now. Presuming that scale is roughly right, is SpaceX a rule breaker?
Karl Thiel: SpaceX is synonymous with breaking the rules. The idea of a reusable rocket is a massively rule-breaking idea. It's obviously disrupted its industry. I don't think we're really going back in the foreseeable future to government-funded, completely government-sponsored Space program. In that sense, it's absolutely a rule breaker. That does not mean I'm necessarily interested in the IPO. You mentioned $15 billion in revenue. A $1.5 trillion valuation on IPO would mean that they're trading at 100 times sales. I don't think that there's anything remotely in the company as it exists today that justifies that. I don't even think that if you take the current trends and project them forward linearly, it justifies that. To justify that, you need to see a meaningful acceleration of a number of trends, which means that you need to be betting that things that have not happened are going to happen, and they become increasingly riskier. The one big thing is that Starship needs to work, and Starship is the fully reusable rocket. Falcon 9, which is commercially used is partially reusable. Starship is supposed to be entirely reusable. If that happens, the two things about Starship is, one, it's entirely reusable and two, it's absolutely massive can carry a huge payload and critically can carry satellites into space that currently cannot be carried by Falcon 9. That becomes a game-changer for the company, and can SpaceX do that? I believe they can. This isn't just on paper. This is actually being tested. It's not fully ready for prime time, but they've had some successful tests with Starship. I believe they can get to that part of it in all likelihood, and that itself is a game-changer. The second part, though, really involves taking StarLink to a new level that I have some doubts about, and we can talk about that further, Tim.
Tim Beyers: Maybe you can talk about this in your answer because the final question on this and I'll give you a lead-up to this, Rick. Karl said 100 times sales. Now, that would be 100 times 2025 sales, but the projected revenue for 2026, the target date for the SpaceX IPO, would be like summer 2026. The implied revenue growth, from what I'm seeing here, again, these are Gemini estimates pulled from different sources, $22-23 billion in Annualia's revenue. About 65 X forward sales. There's your multiple. We know we've talked about the business. Are you a buyer of the SpaceX IPO, Rick?
Rick Munarriz: This multiple is just for Starlink, you're talking about Starlink and everything else that's there though that is all of SpaceX. All of SpaceX. I'm hesitant to say yes. Add a 1.5 trillion valuation is paying 65 times for a global telecom company is not something very smart. But again, it's all these unknown variables, and that the story will change over time. We see this even with owned Tesla company. The stock has pretty much doubled since April. But if you bought it a year earlier, you're not doing so well. I think it's a matter of finding the right spot to get into SpaceX. There's going to be a lot of hype when the IPO happens, but out of the gate, knowing that there'll probably be an IPO pop and take it even higher, at least temporarily, I'm not into chasing that rocket.
Karl Thiel: I agree with that too. I will say, just to take a populist bent here for a moment. The question of will you buy the IPO is largely an irrelevant one for us. You can't really buy the IPO in all likelihood. You can buy the Post Pop IPO. I would say for most people, it probably makes sense to just sit back and see what happens for a while. It could continue to go straight up, but I would suspect that there would be a better opportunity if you're interested in the company.
Rick Munarriz: I think if you want an opportunity in this, again, this is. But I mean, again, so 10 years ago, Google Alphabet, through Google Ventures, paid $900 million, got a 7% stake a little more than 7% stake in SpaceX. If it is a $1.5 trillion company, this is basically a 100-plus bag or 120 bagger, $110 billion stake that Alphabet will have in SpaceX. Not going to move at the need a lot in alphabet massive world, but at least that's a safer way to potentially play SpaceX. Rick, with the reckless prediction here, your other bets line item in the next alphabet Earnings, Karl, is going to look a lot better. I think I'm with you guys. But we want to know what you think. Let us know. Leave a comment. Are you buying the SpaceX IPO? Up next, we are going to answer some mindset questions. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Tim Beyers: Alright, fools, welcome back. Tim Byers with Karl Teal and Rick Pinares. We're going to talk Mindset. Thank you so much for answering the call for Mindset questions. As a reminder, this occasional segment will be aimed at helping you master the most important skill in investing, keeping the discipline to get in the market and stay in the market for the long term. We've got a question from Mark. I hope I'm pronouncing your last name correctly here. I'm going to say Mark Degner, but Mark is asking, Rick. What's the harm in sprinkling a few dollars on Fomo stocks as long as it's done with funds I'm not relying on to fund my retirement and can afford to lose in the worst case. What's the difference between Fomo for those who don't know what that is, Fomo is fear of missing out. Fear of missing out investing and seeking a bright future for a company whose stock is gaining momentum. Rick, what advice do you have for Mark?
Rick Munarriz: I want to say that, again, at Rule Breakers, we tend to swing for the fences. Fomo I know it's almost seems like a demeaning thing, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Fear of missing out. But the caveat here is fear of missing out is one thing. Oh, I want to buy this because I want to keep up with the Joneses. I see something shiny. I have to chase that before it gets away from me. That's bad. But to me, Fomo what really needs is fo ho, which is fear of homework omission. If you're going to just buy Fomo without doing your due diligence, that's where you get messed up. Fomo without FOHO is a no no in my book. But Fomo as in finding an exciting stock and you want that to be part of your portfolio, I do not have a problem with that, especially with a small part of your portfolio. Swing for the fences. Just next time you're up to plate, maybe try to be a contact it her to balance things out.
Tim Beyers: I like this. Fomo without Foho is a no no. Karl, what do you got for Mark here?
Karl Thiel: I guess, not saying anything radically different than Rick, but just calling it a Fomo stock implies that you are buying it for no reason other than that you are chasing momentum and you're fearful, and the same stock might actually be a good investment if you have a thesis that you're watching play out. Basically, the same thing Rick is saying, have a reason that you're buying it, and then I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Tim Beyers: The main issue here, Mark, is if you are interested in a stock, what you want to know is what you want to see so that you can follow the stock accordingly. If you go in, I don't know. This thing could be amazing. I have no idea what I'm getting into, that's probably sub-optimal. But if you have an idea of what it is, you think you're going to see, so then you can measure it and follow it and be a curious investor, then I think you might be rewarded. Keep sending in your Mindset questions. I am at [email protected], so that's T-B-E-Y-R-S at fool.com, and you could be featured in a mindset question on a future show. Up next, we're going to preview Tuesday's show with Emily Flipping. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Alright, welcome back Fools. For Tuesday, Emily Flipping has Jason Hall and San Miteo, so you are going to want to be sure to tune in as we start putting the wraps on not only another earnings season, but also another year. How'd 2025 treat your portfolio? Let's just go round the horn on that. I feel like I did OK. Rick, how has 2025 treated your portfolio so far?
Rick Munarriz: A lot better than I thought it would be in early April of this year. Yes, I'm pleasantly surprised with how my portfolio went up on a year I was braced for the worst. Yes, well done. Well done portfolio. Well done markets.
Tim Beyers: Yeah, Karl, how about you?
Karl Thiel: It's been a pretty good year overall, and I own a lot of biotech stocks, in number, not necessarily a huge part of my portfolio. They're not, but I do own a fair number of them, and it's been a banner year for biotech, so that's been helpful.
Tim Beyers: Yeah, I like the way you do this, by the way, just as a pro tip on our way out here. Karl does, I think, what I like to do, I own a lot of tech, but I like to buy really small and then build positions up over time. I don't think you're like, overwhelmingly over-indexed on tiny, speculative biotech, and I neither am not over-indexed at all on tiny speculative tech. But I do have a fair amount of it. Fools, thank you for tuning in to Motley Fool Money. We hope you're getting ready for a fantastic holiday break.
As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. Fools, we're getting down to the last few shows here. Thank you for tuning in. Our engineer today was Annie Pope, our producer Anan Chuck Balu. Thanks very much to our guests, Karl Teal and Rick Pinares. I am your host, Tim Byers. Now stay tuned for Emily Flipping, Jason Hall, Sami Deo tomorrow. Fool on, everyone. See you soon.
