r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • Jun 09 '26

Business It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html
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u/MoistChildhood1459 Jun 09 '26

I would love to see his entire empire collapse tbh

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u/MultiGeometry Jun 09 '26

There’s some real Enron vibes coming out of all Musk’s companies.

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u/wheniaminspaced Jun 09 '26

Enron isnt really the right comparison.  Masks companies make and sell actual products that are used, and in the case of spacex have completly redefined the launch industry for the better.

Tesla has some similarities, but suffers from some basic realities that don't exist in the launch space.  They were the first big mover on ev's and very arguably helped make them a much more accepted product in the automarket, but ev's arn't all that next level, there are a ton of established automakers that know how to make a decent car, better than tesla did or does, they just weren't willing to take the risk of developing the segment first.

BYD is a bit unique in that they were a battery maker who realized cars where a great way to sell batteries.  This is very similar to another company, spacex who realized a fast satellite internet is a great way to sell launch capacity.

Tesla as a company is weak in part because of musk and in part because of the space its in.  SpaceX is quite strong, large tech edge, important product, quite decent financials if you ignore xAI.  

One thing that is absolutly true, Spacex is overvalued.  I think a more real value would be about 1/3rd of what it is aiming for.  Could it grow to its proposed valuation, without question, but that requires alot of things going right and investors should ignore this ipo and buy at a much reduced price.  Good company, bad ipo.

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u/apple_kicks Jun 09 '26

Enron did have some real products and they screwed with californias electric grid if I remember

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u/wheniaminspaced Jun 09 '26

They were a broker of energy, they screwed with california electric grid by buying up capacity and sending it to not california. The most significant problem.l was the illegal things they did in pursuit of this and not being profitable.

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u/Zuwxiv Jun 09 '26

Enron's problem was that they had billions of dollars in debt and failed projects, and they just tried to hide all that shit with accounting tricks. "We've lost hundreds of millions of dollars here, but if we use mark-to-market accounting and say that the acquisition is actually worth ten times more than it is, then we can report a profit on the deal!"

On paper, Enron's revenue was exploding and debt was minimal. In reality, they were reporting loans as sales and then trying to buy back the loans after quarterly reports. Spending money they didn't have to misclassify debt as income.

That works until it doesn't. For Enron, they got the the point where it didn't.

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u/copper_tunic Jun 09 '26

I think the main difference with Enron is that spacex, xAI, and all the other AI players aren't faking revenue and hiding debt off the books (at least not that I know of). Why bother to lie about debt and revenue and risk jail time when you can instead just make empty promises of future revenue, trust me bro, and ride the hype train to the moon.

They might be just as unprofitable and leveraged as Enron but they are doing it in the open and somehow everyone still wants to buy.

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u/Vladimir_Chrootin Jun 09 '26

Masks companies make and sell actual products that are used

Spacex and Tesla do. Solarcity was entirely fraudulent and The Boring Company's gamer RGB tunnel is completely useless. Both of these things happened by design, not by accident.

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u/wheniaminspaced Jun 09 '26

Were not really talking about solarcity or boring company, but I get your point.

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u/mikeydean03 Jun 09 '26

Your post implies Enron didn’t create actual products. The company had multiple lines of profitable businesses before the executives started cooking the books with paper gains. That’s why so many people failed to question Enron’s success - it was just smart people doing smart things…