Elon Musk shares Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

Elon Musk shared on X, his social media site formally known as Twitter, that Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow. While Musk didn’t state any time period, if this means over the operational history of the product, that would be a big deal for the product’s success.

Starlink is no longer in the red

Musk shared in a post on X, that Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, has achieved “breakeven cash flow.” This means that the service’s revenue is equal to Starlink’s expenses, basically meaning that the product might start seeing its numbers be in the green rather than red.

Excited to announce that @SpaceX @Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow! Excellent work by a great team.

Starlink is also now a majority of all active satellites and will have launched a majority of all satellites cumulatively from Earth by next year.

Elon Musk via x

SpaceX began launching Starlink satellites in 2018 with two test satellites called TinTin A and B. These satellites were a proof of concept to the technology that would later come on the mass produced Starlink satellites. A year later, the company began launching the v0.9 satellites, 60 at a time.

Now the company is launching its 2.0 mini satellites, is the largest operator of satellites in orbit, and has over two million customers world wide.

Starlink isn’t the only satellite internet provider, OneWeb is a competitor in the enterprise space and several legacy operators still exist. However, Starlink is the only to achieve commercial success selling satellite services directly to consumers.

There’s a big upfront cost to developing a network of satellites in orbit and since 2018 Starlink has been operating at a loss. In 2022, the program had a cash flow positive quarter and in the first quarter of this year SpaceX as a whole turned a profit. All of this while spending billions developing a fully reusable rocket in South Texas.

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How long until Starlink IPO?

Both Musk and SpaceX’s COO Gwynne Shotwell have talked about spinning Starlink out as its own company and take it public. An Initial Public Offering, IPO, is a method a company can take its shares to a public stock exchange for anyone to purchase.

However would taking Starlink public be a good thing for the company? Musk regularly discusses the pain of owning and operating a public company. While the businessman isn’t known for a having a filter on what he shares about his public company, Tesla, public companies also have a change in their motives.

When a company is private, it can have a tight grip on its mission, spend money where it might not make sense to non-mission invested shareholders, and generally not worry about having to be open about its finances. Public companies have a much bigger responsibility to increase shareholder values, sometimes slowing down its innovation in the progress.

Another concern could be a downturn in the IPO market. Out of the last 100 IPOs, only 27 recorded a positive return as of market closing Friday. Only five of those IPOs’ had returns above or near 100%.

Musk has stated that Starlink IPO consideration would come when the program went into the green. His recent statement could mean that milestone is near or already here. So we’ll have our answer if a second Musk stock is coming soon enough.