00:00I guess it was a question of just when, right, not if it was going to happen.
00:05Yeah, I just want to correct and clarify some things for you guys.
00:08There are two distinct things here.
00:09There is a tender offer, which is an indecider share sale, where basically SpaceX does this annually or biannually.
00:17It allows employees and early investors to sell shares at a specific price and therefore valuation to give them some liquidity.
00:25So the journal had reported that this tender was at a share price that would give a valuation of $800 billion, double what we believe the valuation to be earlier this year.
00:36I'm hearing that there is a tender underway.
00:39It could close by Monday.
00:41But actually, the share price I was hearing is much nearer to $300 apiece, which would put the valuation nearer to $600 billion.
00:49So this is a kind of live situation.
00:51The IPO part of it is separate, that, you know, in communications with investors, the company is saying that in the second half of next year, 2026, they'd look at an IPO.
01:02And the bit you're right about is that it would be the whole company.
01:06Previously, we reported that one of the ideas was that SpaceX would spin off Starlink, its space-based, constellation-based internet service, rather than the whole company.
01:16But, you know, that is contrary to what the information's put out this morning.
01:19Right. OK, thank you for clarifying that.
01:21There's a lot going on here with SpaceX, and we know investors are hungry for any information they can get on it because right now it's publicly, it's privately held.
01:28And so you can't really get access to it.
01:32Having said all of that, Ed, Elon Musk would be the CEO of two publicly traded companies if this happens.
01:38Does his current contract or his current setup with Tesla allow for that?
01:42Yeah, I mean, as you know, Scarlett, we spoke to Tesla's board chair, Robin Denholm, about this exact idea twice.
01:49The board seems comfortable, based on the compensation agreement, which has now been ratified by Tesla shareholders, that Musk continues on at the helm of other companies.
02:00And actually, the board went a step further to say that there's value in Elon Musk having interaction with these companies because in the future, they basically believe they're highly analogous.
02:12You know, if you think about space-based internet and where this market's going right now, a very big concentration on the potential for space-based data centers, they will see it as a kind of value add to have the relationship between the two companies.
02:24The technicalities of being the CEO of two public companies, no idea.
02:28You know, that will come out in the wash, right, when they talk to investors about it.
02:32But remember that SpaceX does have highly capable executives in President and COO Gwynne Shotwell, who runs the place day-to-day.
02:40And then Brett Johnson, the CFO, is the guy that does all the money talk with investors anyway.
02:45I wonder if this is going to make Jeff Bezos want to take Blue Origin public.
02:49Ooh, good question.
02:51Yeah, it's a great question.
02:51I mean, like, look, it is an expensive endeavor to first get the company off the ground, pardon the pun, for launch companies.
03:01But at this point, the difference with SpaceX is that they have changed the economics of launch and then deployment of Starlink.
03:09The reason that we talked about at one time, this was in 2024, spinning off Starlink as opposed to an IPO of the whole company,
03:16is that, A, the revenues from Starlink now eclipse launch, but B, it's a much higher margin, cash flow positive business.
03:26There isn't a lot of profit to be made in launching rockets into orbit.
03:30But also, Musk has been quite transparent.
03:33It tops out.
03:35There's only so much money you can make from doing that.
03:37And so Blue Origin is much earlier in its life cycle, getting the economics right of launch,
03:43but also the other things it wants to do beyond just putting things into orbit.
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