SpaceX: To boldly go where no investor comms strategy has gone before
The wait for the SpaceX IPO is finally over, but it’s what happens next that will be Musk’s greatest challenge yet, says Tim Focas
For what seems like an eternity now, investors have been deliberating when exactly SpaceX will finally become a public company. With the wait soon to be over, attentions will quickly turn away from the hype and hysteria of the $1.77 trillion valuation on opening day, to what is perhaps the biggest investor communications challenge any public company has faced in living memory.
The cold hard reality of life as a public company is one of, once all the opening day excitement has died down, sifting through endless mundane analyst reports and intricate preparation ahead of quarterly earnings calls. It is all the stuff underpinning the glitz and glamour of opening day and history tells is that investors, in the long run, like companies that are boring and predictable. The problem facing many investors when it comes to SpaceX, is that it looks like the political equivalent of an exciting affair with Nigel Farage when the sensible voice in your head is saying just get married to Phillip Hammond. Like a policy promise from Reform UK, SpaceX’s biggest opportunities may take decades to reach their full financial potential, if they ever happen at all.
The risks are, if management only focuses on feeding the retail segment of the market’s insatiable appetite for quick fire updates, the company will only be tempting a certain group of investors to judge a long game story through a short-term lens. This means that every technological barrier that is not overcome, and let’s face it in the aerospace sector there are sure to be a few, could trigger an outsized reaction from the market.
Concrete milestones
This is not to say that simply saying nothing by hiding behind layers of obfuscation and bamboozling investor jargon is the alternative option. Hardly the way Elon likes to do things. The post IPO investor comms approach has to be focused around concrete milestones and not flimsy forecasts. Forget the big promises about Mars colonies by 2040, as far as serious investors are concerned, it is all about hard empirical evidence showing how the company is reducing uncertainty around its long-term ambitions. Indisputable facts around average revenues per user, a specific launch cadence, firm commercial contracts, not to mention clear details around any government partnerships, all need to be at the forefront. Oh, and if progress towards lowering the cost of access to space is not on track, be crystal clear about the reasons as to why because, ultimately, sustainable long terms investors will put long term value on an honest, take the rough with the smooth, communications style.
SpaceX management must make a connection between the nitty gritty of operational performance and tomorrow’s lofty ambitions. Amazon was the poster child for this approach during its early days as a public company in the 2000s. Investors were repeatedly asked to look beyond near-term earnings and focus instead on indicators of future scale. While the market did not always agree, it at least understood the rationale. SpaceX could do a lot worse than follow a similar playbook. Failed rocket launches will not be the final frontier to SpaceX shares. However, a failure of expectation management may just be.
Tim Focas is head of capital markets at Aspectus Group