Elon Musk overshadows SpaceX's first earnings call with bold promises
SpaceX's first earnings call as a public company featured Elon Musk making ambitious claims while his executives tried to present more measured versions. The contrast underscores the challenges of Musk's management style in a publicly traded company.
SpaceX held its first earnings call as a public company on Tuesday, giving investors an early look at the gap between founder Elon Musk's grand vision and the more measured tone of his executives.
Musk said Starlink could deliver "a majority of the world's internet" in less than 10 years in countries where the service is allowed. Shortly after, Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell offered a more cautious version, saying the next-generation V3 satellites would add capacity and help the company serve more customers, with Starlink expected to represent a significant portion of global internet traffic.
Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen provided specific financial targets. He said SpaceX had already contracted an additional $6.7 billion in cloud services revenue during the first weeks of the third quarter, for a six-month period beginning in October. He added that the company, including contribution from Cursor, expected to reach $100 billion in annualized revenue run rate (ARR) by the end of the year, based on expected December revenue. Johnsen also noted that current economics translate into a payback period of less than one year for new compute capital deployments.
Musk later dismissed any doubt about that goal, saying the $100 billion ARR figure was not questionable and would likely be higher. He also claimed that internal projections for reaching $1 trillion in revenue had moved up from 2031 to 2030, with a non-zero chance of happening in 2029.
When a shareholder asked about SpaceX's human landing system for NASA's Artemis missions, Musk said the prototype rocket could be ready to fly people by the end of next year, and that Starship could fly once a day by this time next year. Shotwell followed up by saying SpaceX was still focused on NASA-mandated milestones and repeating a goal of landing astronauts on the moon in 2028.
Musk also declared the heat shield problem solved, after the latest Starship test flight splashed down intact in the Indian Ocean last month. The company had improved the heat shield design.
Musk has a long track record of unfulfilled promises, such as his 2016 prediction of humans on Mars within six years. Now that SpaceX is public, those comments could carry more risk. However, securities regulators and the Justice Department have scaled back enforcement, and SpaceX's Texas incorporation makes it harder for investors to sue.
