An internal tender offer from Elon Musk’s space rocket/internet/satellite company SpaceX has valued it at approximately US$180 billion, according to a Bloomberg report.
If true, it would value privately owned SpaceX near Britain’s largest company Shell (LON:RDSa) PLC (LSE:SHEL, NYSE:SHEL), the oil and gas titan with a market capitalisation of over US$200 billion (£164 billion).
The tender offer comes amid rumours of California-based SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO) in 2024, though Musk has denied these reports.
SpaceX is the market leader in contract space launch services, owing to lucrative deals with NASA, the US Air Force, the European Space Agency and major other global space agencies.
It also operates internet services through the Starlink 5,000-satellite Starlink constellation. The constellation is occasionally visible as it passes over the night sky.
Starlink’s revenues surged sixfold to US$1.4 billion in its last reporting year, but this is still far below the group’s US$12 billion target first suggested in 2015.
According to a Wall Street Journal report in August, SpaceX generated US$55 million in profit on US$1.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2023.
This implies an astronomical 30-times revenue multiple on SpaceX’s rumoured US$180 billion valuation.
However, SpaceX is still not the most-valuable privately held company.
That honour goes to TikTok parent ByteDance, which is valued at US$225 billion, according to CBSInsights.
Chinese junk fashion merchant Shein comes in third at US$66 billion, followed by Stripe, Databricks, Canva, Revolut and Fortnite developer Epic Games.
ChatGPT creator OpenAI is currently in 10th place, though a reported tender offer would bring the AI firm’s valuation above Shein’s.