This SpaceX Rival's Stock Is Up ~510% In One Year

I told you about RocketLab one day before it pumped 22%

Four days ago, I posted a video on my Instagram about this company I’ve been researching. Just one day later, the stock price jumped 22%. It’s up ~510% over the past year!

RocketLab is the closest thing you can get to investing in SpaceX, which is currently still a privately-held company.

I’m not an expert on the space economy. But I do have a brother who works as an engineer for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ rival rocketship company.

Here’s everything you need to know about the space economy, and why I’m thinking of investing in RocketLab.

Why Space?

Why should we care about space?

GPS navigation, the internet, phones and TVs, weather forecasting, and farming. All of these critical technologies today rely on satellites in space.

That stuff isn’t funded by governments or science research grants. Companies like Starlink pay to have them put out there, and charge other companies for renting their bandwidth.

We’ve put thousands of satellites into space, like a cloud of steel around our planet. According to UNOOSA records, 8,261 satellites are orbiting the Earth as of January 2022, out of which only 4,852 (58%) are active.

Map shows all man-made satellites. Geostationary satellites are highlighted in red and the 24 hour trajectory is displayed for the ESA satellite GIOVE-B.

Why Rockets?

How did all those satellites get there? Rockets.

Companies like SpaceX, and RocketLab are the cargo planes for satellites.

It gets even better. If you want to go further (especially for commercial cargo), you have long-haul trucks, cargo ships, and planes.

But unlike your transportation options on Earth, there are exactly zero alternatives to get satellites into space. There is only one way up - rockets.

About 40% of the cost to put a satellite into space is the cab fare. That goes to companies like SpaceX, and RocketLab.

Naturally, launch prices are high today because:

1. the technology needs work (e.g. booster recovery),

2. everyone is working to build bigger rockets with higher payloads to provide better unit economics (like carpooling), and

3. more competitors like Blue Origin, and RocketLab are slowly entering space.

Companies like Rocket Lab are trying to demonstrate that they can do space launches at approximately 10% of the cost of bigger space companies, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

Why RocketLab?

SpaceX today is king in the space economy. Of the roughly 300 orbital launches conducted around the world each year, 120 of these are done by SpaceX.

Why? They have the biggest rockets/payloads, and are constantly working to reduce the cost of launch through better engine designs, booster recovery, and more.

In contrast, RocketLab only did 10 orbital launches per year. But the company is developing something to compete with SpaceX - called Neutron.

Companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX have bigger names and backing - but they are private. That means you can’t invest in them easily, or exit your position if things change.

Larger incumbents such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman are publicly listed. But their services far more costly to end customers, space isn’t their main gig, and they also do a whole bunch of other non-space rocket stuff.

The kind that people point at each other - and not into space.

This makes RocketLab the only publicly traded stock for launching space-bound rockets, that you can buy today.

Incumbent rocket companies are in a different kind of rocket business

Concluding Thoughts

Space is probably the most popularly-known, yet poorly understood sector of the economy. Part of this is due to the popular stories we’re told about space exploration.

Take SpaceX - Elon Musk’s rocket company that almost everyone knows about. Elon loves talking about Mars in the same breath as SpaceX.

So, when we think of space, we think of moonwalks, science experiments on the ISS, planetary exploration, and futuristic deep space mining. Or intercontinental ballistic missiles.

But the space economy isn’t just some futuristic pipedream of military generals, scientists, and billionaires. We depend on space - even as you are reading this. Our economy today would collapse without it.

The space economy is only going to continue growing.

And companies like RocketLab are poised to benefit from being the only way to send stuff up there.