alt Hacker NewsCrazy 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
Replies
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.
Spacex has been playing fuckfuck games in recent months to boost their subscriber numbers.
The day after I got my dish I got an email that the price of the base plan would double. They also sent residential subscribers "free" dishes, which a ton of people took them up on right before the price change
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.
Starlink is a cash machine because the costs are externalised to the rest of the company, all in it's a money pit.
What is the best way to hedge against this turkey being included in my index funds?
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.
Depreciation should be quite substantial - I recall reading that the starlink sats have a 5 year life expectancy?
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 ...).
If they cleaved off xAI and let it die, they'd be in much better shape!
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.