Crazy this company will IPO for >1B with such bad financials! That said, Starlink seems to be a real cash machine, not as good as ads but enough to support AI bets.
2025:
- Revenue: $18.7B, up from $14.0B in 2024
- Operating loss: -$2.6B
- Net loss: -$4.9B
- Adjusted EBITDA: $6.6B
- Operating cash flow: $6.8B
- Capex: $20.7B
Segment breakdown:
- Starlink / Connectivity: $11.4B revenue, $4.4B operating income, $7.2B adj. EBITDA
- Space / launch: $4.1B revenue, -$657M operating loss
- AI / xAI / X: $3.2B revenue, -$6.4B operating loss
Starlink metrics:
- Subscribers: 8.9M at end-2025, 10.3M by Mar 31 2026
- ARPU: $99/month in 2023, $81 in 2025, $66 in Q1 2026
Balance sheet as of Mar 31 2026:
- Cash: $15.9B
- Marketable securities: $7.8B
- Total assets: $102.1B
- Total liabilities: $60.5B
- Debt / finance leases: about $30.3B
The numbers overall are worse than I expected. I can't believe Serious People are talking about putting this in the market at a trilly.
> Starlink seems to be a real cash machine
It has been said more than once that Starlink financials cannot be analyzed apart from SpaceX financials. Very easy to move the launch costs from one entity to the other depending on whether it is more beneficial to show more revenue for SpaceX or more profit for Starlink.
aeternum
today at 11:54 PM
Looks like it's gonna be closer to 2 trilly
Analemma_
today at 9:37 PM
I can't believe that my index funds are going to be looted to pay for this turd.
thephyber
today at 11:09 PM
We can thank Nasdaq for lowering the standards to fast track SpaceX into an index with only having 5% float. Soon after it lists on the major indexes, we are gonna have some turbulence.
As if any of the marketcaps actualy reflect a company's true value.
It's never just about financials.
That's kind of the whole point of a stock market. If you already had a solid revenue stream, you wouldn't need investment.
These numbers would be kind of typical for a software play, since the great thing about software is that you write it once and then sell it many times. They're making a similar assertion for hardware: "fund rocket ship design, and sell it many times (i.e. lots of launches)".
The weird looking part to he is cramming xAI into it. It's a completely different business with little overlap that I can see, in a crowded market that they are far from leading.
> The weird looking part to he is cramming xAI into it. It's a completely different business with little overlap that I can see, in a crowded market that they are far from leading.
My personal theory is that Musk wants to roll up all his companies into a mega corporation that he fully controls, and this is part of the process. I expect Tesla and SpaceX to merge years down the line.
Of course, the counter to this thesis is that he didn't roll in Neuralink or Boring Company. But its probably that these three companies + Tesla are the ones he's most passionate about.
electriclove
today at 11:05 PM
There were talks in the past about spinning Starlink out. Perhaps the thinking that led them to keep Starlink in is the same thinking about their new data center business (what they got from xAI and will grow in orbit in the future)
stainablesteel
today at 10:58 PM
putting tesla robots on the moon ran by LLMs seems to be a pretty coherent overall plan, I don't think it's different
ACCount37
today at 11:31 PM
I'm surprised launch is only -$0.65B, given just how much were they sinking into launch infrastructure and R&D for Starship.
Guess Falcon 9 the old reliable is still printing cash in the meanwhile.
JeremyNT
today at 10:34 PM
What is the best way to hedge against this turkey being included in my index funds?
doctoboggan
today at 11:08 PM
short it?
Choose another index where it is not included?
thephyber
today at 11:17 PM
Itâs so big that itâs going to swing the markets when insiders start to liquidate after it is listed and on some indexes.
Starlink is a cash machine because the costs are externalised to the rest of the company, all in it's a money pit.
It's pretty much expected that a rapidly growing high tech company is gonna have a lot of losses and debt right? They're just spending huge amounts of money on capex. Not doing so would be like floating minerals in Starcraft: symptomatic of bad macro.
Spartan-S63
today at 10:28 PM
If they cleaved off xAI and let it die, they'd be in much better shape!
electriclove
today at 10:31 PM
Did you see that they are getting $15B/year from Anthropic because of what xAI built?
xAI is by far their most profitable segment, receiving 1.25B a month from Anthropic.
That 1.25B per month is not profit
Assuming renting their datacenters doesn't cost them any more than running them for themselves, and plugging 15B a year of revenue (which ignores X entirely and other forms of revenue) you get 5.4B income, more than Starlink 4.4B income (which is slightly subsidized by the launch segment)
Depreciation should be quite substantial - I recall reading that the starlink sats have a 5 year life expectancy?
moralestapia
today at 9:30 PM
Typo: I'm sure you meant >1T.
>ARPU: $99/month in 2023, $81 in 2025, $66 in Q1 2026
Oof, are they already on diminishing returns phase?
While I don't think the financials are bad, I agree, this is definitely not a 1T company (but the market can stay irrational ...).
Starlink is giving away the satellite dishes for free to grow customers. These dishes are expensive to manufacture and cost the company hundreds of dollars each. The estimated manufacturing cost of a Starlink standard dish is around $400.
That shouldn't be included in ARPU.
fragmede
today at 10:08 PM
Which is a fine thing to say, but CAC vs LTV (customer acquisition cost vs lifetime value of the customer) is the underlying equation. If it costs them $150 to give away a dish, but they get, say, $300 before the user churns, they still come out ahead.
They've been upping the subscription prices recently past few months.