Analyzing SpaceX’s Stock and Elon Musk’s Vision

Watching SpaceX stock trade in its early days as a public company has been akin to observing a successful rocket launch. The rise of the company’s shares has been a spectacle.

The accolades keep coming: SpaceX had the largest initial public offering in history, making its founder, Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire. Its market value reached about $2.4 trillion on a Thursday. During that week, it ranked just behind Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), and Apple in market capitalization. Despite a couple of rough days, it remains among the top 10 stocks, a prestigious group indeed.

But does SpaceX truly belong there? Are its shares worth their current value?

There are doubts. Elon Musk is a visionary with actual accomplishments at both Tesla and SpaceX. His unique abilities lead many fans to justify high share prices. However, the current price is challenging to justify by traditional metrics. The company is losing money, though that’s not the biggest concern.

Perhaps most worrisome is that investing in SpaceX is a bold gamble on a science fiction ambition. The company’s prospectus explicitly states its dedication to the “establishment of a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”

This aspiration isn’t mere whimsy. Elon Musk has consistently and in detail expressed his commitment to “making humans an interplanetary species.”

This mission could drain any profits SpaceX might achieve. Even if SpaceX excels in every other aspect, the Mars project could financially overwhelm it.