$tarlink — Analyst on Starlinks rapid rise: Nothing short of mind-blowing Starlink’s estimated free cash flow this year is about $600 million.
Eric Berger – May 10, 2024 1:45 pm UTC Enlarge / 60 Starlink satellites stacked for launch at SpaceX facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2019.SpaceX reader comments 9
According to the research firm Quilty Space, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet business is now profitable.
During a webinar on Thursday, analysts from the firm outlined the reasons why they think SpaceX has been able to achieve a positive cash flow in its space Internet business just five years after the first batch of 60 satellites were launched.
The co-founder of the firm, Chris Quilty, said the rapidity of Starlink’s rise surprised a lot of people, including himself. “A lot of industry veterans kind of scoffed at the idea,” he said. “We’d seen this before.” Some history
Both SpaceX and another company, OneWeb, announced plans to build satellite megaconstellations back in 2015 to deliver broadband Internet from low-Earth orbit. There was a lot of skepticism in the space community at the time because such plans had come and gone before, including a $9 billion constellation proposed by Teledesic with about 800 satellites that only ever managed to put a single demonstration satellite into space.
The thinking was that it was too difficult to launch that many spacecraft, and too technically challenging to get them all to communicate. Quilty recalled his own comments on the proposals back in 2015. Enlarge / Analysis of Starlink financials in the last three years.Quilty Space
“I correctly forecast that there would be no near term impact on the industry, but boy, was I wrong on the long-term impact,” He said. “I think I called for possibly a partial impact on certain segments of the industry. Incorrect. But remember the context back in 2015, the largest constellation in existence was Iridium with 66 satellites, and back in 2015, it wasn’t even entirely clear that they were going to make it successfully without a second dip into bankruptcy.”
It is clear that SpaceX has been successful on the launch and technical challenges. The company has deployed nearly 6,000 satellites, with more than 5,200 still operational and delivering Internet to 2.7 million customers in 75 different countries. But is the service profitable? That’s the question Quilty and his research team sought to address. Build a model
Because Starlink is part of SpaceX’s portfolio, the company’s true financial situation is private. So Quilty built a model to assess the profitability of the company. First, the researchers assessed revenue. The firm estimates this will grow to $6.6 billion in 2024, up from essentially zero just four years ago. Advertisement
“What Starlink achieved in the past three years is nothing short of mind-blowing,” Quilty said. “If you want to put that in context, SES and Intelsat announced in the last two weeksthese are the two largest geo-satellite operatorsthat they’re going to combine. They’ll have combined revenues of about 4.1 billion.”
In addition to rapidly growing its subscriber base, SpaceX has managed to control costs. It has built its satellites, which are connected to Internet hubs on Earth and beam connectivity to user terminals, for far less money than historical rivals. The version 1.0 satellites are estimated to have cost just $200,000.Enlarge / Building satellites for less.Quilty Space
How has SpaceX done this? Caleb Henry, director of research for Quilty, pointed to three major factors.
“One is, they really, really aggressively vertically integrate, and that allows them to keep costs down by not having to absorb the profit margins from outside suppliers,” he said. “They really designed for manufacture and for cheap manufacture. And you can kind of see that in some of the component selections and designs that they’ve used. And then they’ve also built really high volume, so a production cadence and rate that the industry has not seen before.” Getting to a profit
Quilty estimates that Starlink will have an EBITDA of $3.8 billion this year. This value indicates how well a company is managing its day-to-day operations and stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Additionally, Quilty estimates that capital expenditures for Starlink will be $3.1 billion this year. This leaves an estimated free cash flow from the business of about $600 million. In other words, Starlink is making money for SpaceX. It is self-sustaining.
According to Quilty’s analysis, the Starlink business has also addressed some concerns about its long-term financial viability. For example, it no longer subsidizes the cost of user terminals in the United States, and the replenishment costs for satellites on orbit is manageable.
These figures, it should be noted, do not include SpaceX’s Starshield business, which is building custom satellites for the US military for observation purposes and will likely leverage its Starlink technology.
There is also room for significant growth for Starlink, as the larger Starship rocket comes online and begins to launch version 3.0 Starlink satellites. These are significantly chunkier, likely about 1.5 metric tons each, and will have the capability for significantly more broadband and enable direct-to-cell communications, removing the need for user terminals. reader comments 9 Eric Berger Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to wonky NASA policy, and author of the book Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars
