Shadowing Practice: SpaceX: The IPO where the math doesn't matter | About That - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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SpaceX is blasting off on the stock market in a way that no company in human history has ever done.
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SpaceX is blasting off on the stock market in a way that no company in human history has ever done.
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Musk addresses the troops.
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Let's get the opening down.
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It's SpaceX celebrating its record-breaking IPO.
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Almost a $1.8 trillion valuation.
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But what's funny about this story is how, despite it being intrinsically about numbers, share price, company valuations, revenue forecasts,
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for most people who are pulling the trigger and buying SpaceX stock for the first time,
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I don't think the numbers matter very much because you can't arrange them in any way that makes sense.
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If you tried to build a model, I don't know what you'd put in that model.
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Well, this isn't a traditional company in any sense of the word.
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I can't for the life of me understand how anyone is making the math work, which tells me maybe they just aren't.
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I will not try to speculate on the real value of SpaceX.
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But I think I can show you what is so speculative about buying into it.
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And that's what SpaceX is all about.
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It's to take the fiction out of science fiction.
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So this IPO, the first thing that might be your, hey, I didn't know that, is that SpaceX is short for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation,
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which in hindsight would have made space, etc. a funnier name.
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But let's just call that a missed opportunity.
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The opportunity the investing world has grabbed onto,
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though, is 555,555555 shares of the company's stock,
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all going on sale for $135 per share.
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That's the IPO, a private company going public.
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Multiply those numbers out.
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This raises $75 billion US for SpaceX.
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Which sounds like a lot.
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But two important things to note here.
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555 million shares isn't that much.
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It's less than 5% of the company's total stock.
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But at the IPO price of $135 a share, multiplied across all of the company's 12 or 13 billion shares, that is very much.
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And before open trading on the NASDAQ even began today, it gave SpaceX a mind-bending market cap,
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like a total stock value of nearly $1.8 trillion.
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For reference, 10 of the most valuable companies on Earth.
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SpaceX, at that value, knocks one of them off the list.
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Beats even Tesla's market cap.
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Which, by this point, should tell you that yes, Elon Musk is now not just a rich man, he's a very rich man.
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Elon Musk just becoming the world's first trillionaire.
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Now, Tesla is very important to this story
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because it gives us our best glimpse into explaining how on
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earth SpaceX is worth to investors somewhere in the ballpark of two trillion dollars.
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Maybe more, maybe less. Who knows?
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That's the fun of it, I guess.
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And I can show you what I mean.
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Tesla Motors is now a publicly traded company.
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When Tesla first went public 16 years ago and started selling shares to the public, let's say you bought one.
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It would have cost you $17.
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Except, fast forward a decade and a half, you don't own just one share anymore.
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Tesla split its stock, meaning they subdivided everyone's shares many times over, 15 times to be exact, across two massive splits.
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Same $17 value just broken into more pieces.
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So the split adjusted price of each share, something like $1.13, each share today is worth,
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last I checked, just under $400.
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So in those terms, you'd have have transformed a $17 2010 investment into almost $6,000 today.
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That's crazy.
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That's like investing on the stock market and getting compounded annual returns of 44% every year for 16 years,
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when we're all told to generally expect an average of like six or eight.
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And if you're really smooth sailing, Tesla is a company that throughout its history had a pretty big rise in valuation.
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So in that sense, Tesla is sort of this unique outlier on the stock market, right?
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A big part of what made Tesla's meteoric ascent so incredible was that when it went public,
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it was losing money worth just a tiny fraction of what it's worth now.
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It's only car for sale, the Roadster.
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But investors saw value because they saw potential.
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They weren't pricing shares based on what the company was pulling in then.
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They were banking on electric vehicles becoming more popular, batteries, charging stations, infrastructure becoming better,
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that maybe one day this company could build a car capable of driving itself.
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And frankly, they were betting that Elon Musk was the man to do it.
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It's a lottery ticket on Elon Musk and his ability to execute and do things that have never been done before.
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It's been a very successful stock for the people who have held on to it.
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Tesla is now the most valuable automaker in the US, with a market cap of about $85 billion.
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Tesla has become the world's most valuable car maker.
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From the point of view of an investor, SpaceX just might follow that same trajectory.
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And today, it has a big advantage over Tesla, in that it doesn't need to prove it's a real business.
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It is already the global leader in its business.
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As day traders woke up this morning, eager to get a piece of SpaceX, SpaceX was launching a Falcon 9 rocket into low Earth orbit.
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This rocket pioneered the concept of reusability.
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It's flown hundreds of missions.
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And its payload this time?
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Dozens of Starlink satellites.
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SpaceX has thousands of them in low Earth orbit.
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More than every other company and government combined.
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This global communications network makes SpaceX billions of dollars every year.
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And these things, the Falcon 9, Starlink, they aren't even the most impressive things about SpaceX.
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The company has high hopes for Starship,
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the company's fully reusable, super heavy lift launch vehicle meant to transport cargo and crew to space,
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the moon, Mars, and beyond.
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SpaceX also pours billions of dollars into XAI, the company's artificial intelligence wing,
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Which means, if you think about Tesla and how its core business all those years ago was just electric cars, SpaceX is aerospace, its communications,
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and its AI, all wrapped up into one.
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That puts it at the forefront of everything.
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So here's where we bring all of that back down to Earth.
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Starting with the valuation.
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The IPO price of $135 a share, putting the company market cap at somewhere around $1.77 trillion,
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that's nowhere near in the same universe as what this company actually pulls in each year in dollars and cents.
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It's essentially all pure long-term money that's being priced.
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And I can show you the math of it, even though I can tell you right now, it's just so far out of whack, I just don't even see how it matters.
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As I mentioned before, I think when most people think of SpaceX, they think of the splashy rocket launches.
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This is a core part of the business.
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Satellite communication, that's providing internet and mobile to millions of us Earthlings.
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That's another part of the business.
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XAI is the third pillar of SpaceX, folded in just earlier this year where it used to be its own standalone company.
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So pretty recent, but pretty important because two of these pillars are losing a ton of money.
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The space division posted a loss last year of $657 million.
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Just in the first three months of this year, it's down another $662 million.
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AI, it's where a lot of money is being spent without a clear way to recoup that money.
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2025, $6 billion loss, another two and a half in just the first quarter of 2026.
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What keeps this hulking machine churning is Starlink.
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Connectivity generated almost $4.5 billion in profit last year and on track to do the same this year based on its Q1 results.
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But overall, SpaceX is spending far more than it makes, posting a nearly $5 billion loss for 2025
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and nearly as much in just the first three months of 2026 when it acquired XAI.
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So that valuation of somewhere in the $2 trillion range, SpaceX's assets don't add up to anywhere near that and neither do its profits.
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To what extent it's speculation or sensible forecasting, that's a matter of judgment.
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But it doesn't represent current profits.
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It's some sort of expectation of what they'll be in about 20 years' time.
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And that's a big guessing game.
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Where will anything be in 20 years' time?
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Well, we can look to SpaceX's SEC filing for some clues, because there is a regulatory obligation for it to acknowledge to
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shareholders what headwind risks are in the company's future starship big promise
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but big peril spacex recognizes a lot hinges on development testing
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and deployment of starship at scale
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if we are unable to achieve sufficient launch cadence reusability
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and capability our ability to execute our growth strategy would be materially and adversely affected.
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Other hurdles?
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Unforeseen technical challenges, supply chain disruptions, manufacturing difficulties, loss or damage to the vehicle or other components,
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regulatory hurdles, or the need for additional design modifications.
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These kinds of disclaimers are not unusual, but in the case of SpaceX, they are foundational to the point of being existential.
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SpaceX makes a point of acknowledging how it will rely on unproven technologies
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or technologies that do not exist or may require significant advancement and such initiatives may not achieve commercial viability.
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Speaking of viability, do you know where a big part of SpaceX's current viability comes from?
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Our services are subject to risks related to supplying services to the US government.
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Let's talk about that.
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Today it's about a man named Elon and he's one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced.
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It's hard to deny that to the Trump administration, Musk is a known and valued quantity.
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Trump owes a great deal to Musk.
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Elon Musk gave around $75 million to his pro-Donald Trump super PAC in the span of three months.
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President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution.
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He must win to preserve democracy in America.
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And I'm not suggesting there's a direct exchange of favors here, but Musk owes a great deal to the Trump administration.
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SpaceX is one of the biggest government contractors in the United States.
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Almost its entire launch revenue outside of Starlink comes from the U.S government.
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And you might argue, rightfully so, SpaceX has a near monopoly on the heavy and manned launch markets, sending cargo and people into space.
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So NASA and the Department of War give it a lot of money.
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But back to the company's future facing risk.
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What if some or all of that were to disappear as quickly as, say, Elon Musk cleaned house with his Department of Government efficiency,
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slashing contracts and even other departments wholesale?
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Not saying it'll happen, just saying it's a risk on social media and AI,
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because key point here, X and the Grok chatbot are part of SpaceX.
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The company's regulatory filings point to increasing legislative and regulatory activity,
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platform moderation, intellectual property, product liability, data privacy, age restrictions, data disclosure,
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cybersecurity, export controls, consumer protection, all of which are not directly within SpaceX's control.
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From time to time, we are involved in litigation, investigations, and other regulatory proceedings which could be costly,
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time-consuming, and divert management attention, materially adversely affecting our business.
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They're saying they could get sued, and they do get sued.
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There are court cases
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and lawsuits having to do with everything from noise at SpaceX's
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data centers to environmental concerns over land swaps to property concerns over damage from rocket testing.
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And just to give you a window into a case dating back to the Biden administration
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and where legal issues can get very political, SpaceX has been sued even for the way it hires its talent.
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Again, lots of companies get sued, but not many get sued like SpaceX gets sued.
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And bottom line, Musk's biggest companies are intertwined, not just in the way that SpaceX suddenly gobbled up XAI earlier this year,
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but also in the way, for example, that Tesla simply owns shares in SpaceX, millions of them.
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And over the years, all of Musk's biggest companies have at various points faced a very similar problem, which SpaceX continues to face today.
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We have a history of net losses and may not achieve profitability in the future.
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Our substantial level of indebtedness could materially adversely affect our financial condition.
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Our massive amounts of negative money are a problem.
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And managing all of these problems, this whole galaxy of risk, it all goes back to one man.
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As a fairly passive investor myself, I can tell you, when I buy shares in a company, I don't really care all that much about telling the company how to do its job,
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even if my shares technically get me votes on important issues.
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But I derive a lot of confidence in knowing
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that the company is accountable to shareholders in a way
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that hopefully forces it to act responsibly and in all of our best interests.
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But even in going public with its IPO, SpaceX works differently.
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What's on sale to the general public today, and all of those half a billion shares that sold as part of the IPO, those are all class A shares.
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One share, one vote, tiny smidge of control over the company.
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But there's another type of share that isn't ever for sale to the general public, and those are class B shares.
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are super shares where one share is worth 10 votes.
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You know who controls almost all of the company's class B shares?
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Even after the IPO and after all the day trading that follows today,
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Elon Musk is figured to retain somewhere around 82% control of the company.
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This makes him unassailable as leader.
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Elon Musk has control over SpaceX in a way that we've never seen any individual hold over a publicly traded company.
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And when your mission statement is as expansive as building, quote, the systems and technologies necessary to make life multi-planetary,
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to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars, maybe you need that kind of authoritarian control.
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It's literally written into the IPO that Musk cannot be removed as head of SpaceX without his own consent.
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If things go wrong, shareholders might want to replace him and they simply won't be able to do that.
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So look, SpaceX could be a defining generational opportunity to own a critical piece of the tech industry.
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Or it could be a tech trap, a trillion-dollar gamble that needs the stars to align just right for it to pay off.
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But one thing's for sure, many investors will not be able to not own a stake in SpaceX.
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It's a bit like a gravity well pulling investment towards it, including even the most passive types of investments that will bundle SpaceX into their portfolios.
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It's just, if you're one of those, don't expect to get rich quick.
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The company has no immediate plans to pay out dividends, and the time has long passed to be an early investor.
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unless you're playing an incredibly long game, not measured in quarters or even calendar years, but rather in decades.
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Context & Background
In the latest video titled "SpaceX: The IPO where the math doesn't matter," the speaker delves into the remarkable Initial Public Offering (IPO) of SpaceX. With a valuation soaring to nearly $1.8 trillion, the discussion centers around the unconventional nature of this company, highlighting how traditional metrics like share price and company valuation seem irrelevant to many investors. The speaker references Elon Musk and draws comparisons to Tesla, illustrating the speculative essence of investing in groundbreaking technology ventures. This engaging dialogue not only captures the nuances of SpaceX's market entry but also serves as a springboard for enhancing English speaking skills through relevant vocabulary and conversational methods.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- Blasting off: This phrase conveys the concept of launching or starting something with enthusiasm, applicable in both literal and metaphorical contexts.
- Mind-bending market cap: A way to describe an astonishing or difficult-to-comprehend market valuation, perfect for expressing surprise.
- Whole new ballpark: Indicates a completely different situation or environment, great for discussions about changes or new perspectives.
- To take the fiction out of science fiction: This phrase suggests making something fantastical more plausible or realistic, useful in various scenarios discussing innovation.
- Going public: Refers to a private company selling shares on public markets, an essential term for financial discussions or business meetings.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To effectively enhance your speaking skills through shadowing using the insights from this video, follow this structured approach:
- Listen Actively: Watch the video attentively without distractions. Focus on the speaker's tone, pronunciation, and pacing.
- Pause and Repeat: After each segment, pause the video and repeat what you heard. This shadow speech technique strengthens your pronunciation and intonation.
- Utilize a Shadowing App: Use a shadowing app to record your repetitions. Compare your speech with the original audio to identify areas for improvement.
- Practice with Context: Try to use the five phrases in your daily conversations. Create sentences of your own using them to solidify your understanding and fluency.
- Engage in IELTS Speaking Practice: Incorporate these phrases into simulated IELTS speaking sessions. This will provide you with practical applications of your newly learned vocabulary.
By embedding this shadowing technique into your learning routine, you will not only enhance your fluency but also gain comfort in discussing complex topics such as finance and innovation.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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