Many investors are looking to gain a piece of SpaceX’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet business, but when they’ll be able to, the company and its leader still are not sure — despite a few years of delays already.
An initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX’s Starlink will still be three or four years away according to CEO Elon Musk at a company meeting on Thursday, according to an audio recording obtained by CNBC.
During the all-hands-on-deck meeting, Musk extended the IPO’s timeline, saying it wouldn’t take place until the company was “in a smooth sailing situation,” with “good predictability.”
During the meeting, Musk said, “I’m not sure exactly when that [IPO] is, but maybe it will be like — I don’t know, just guessing — three or four years from now.” Musk later added, “I think spinning it off as a public company can make a lot of sense.”
“Being public is definitely an invitation to pain,” Musk told SpaceX employees on Thursday. “And the stock price is just distracting.”
In an email to SpaceX employees in 2019, Musk also said, “it will probably make sense to take Starlink public in about three years or so.”
The SpaceX CEO recently shared the slide deck from the meeting, which revealed there are nearly 500,000 Starlink customers and 15,000 dishes have been sent to Ukraine.
Musk has been known to over-promise on products and plans in years past, often delaying publicly announced plans several times over — such as the Tesla Cybertruck, which has been repeatedly delayed over the past handful of years.
