SpaceX's valuation is too high? Buyers are becoming more cautious.

Many investors hope to have the opportunity to hold some SpaceX stocks. Although the company is privately held, it is still possible. However, interested investors may want to wait a bit longer as the stock price may drop.

Insiders and employees have a platform to trade private company stocks. For example, Glen Anderson's Rainmaker Securities.

Since the end of 2016, more than $4 billion worth of SpaceX stocks have been traded on Rainmaker.

In most cases, trades are made by institutions and so-called qualified investors. A qualified investor should have enough financial acumen to trade unregistered securities. "Qualified" usually refers to high net worth individuals.

Is SpaceX overvalued?

Anderson added: "Currently, we have sizable positions on both sides of the trade. That is, there is a list of potential buyers and sellers on Rainmaker. However, Anderson noted that potential buyers are not willing to pay that much.

Six months ago, a batch of SpaceX stocks would be sold in two to three days. "But now a stake in SpaceX has been on the market for two months and has not been sold."

He raised another question: cash flow. SpaceX's Starlink space Wi-Fi has about 1 million users when it shuts down in 2022 and adds more users in 2023. Annual revenue for the Starlink business could be between $2 billion and $3 billion.

The stock prices of high-valued startups sometimes perform better before the company's initial public offering, and reality follows suit.

Take the electric vehicle startup Lucid, for example. The company's stock hit a historic high of $64.86 in February 2021 and is currently at $8. In the past 12 months, the company's expectations for 2023 sales have plummeted from $3.4 billion to about $1.3 billion.

This does not mean that SpaceX or any startup is destined to fail or overvalued.

SpaceX's current stock price is $80 per share, with a valuation of about $140 billion.

In comparison, Lockheed Martin's stock and debt are worth about $130 billion, with expected sales of about $66 billion in 2023. Of course, Lockheed Martin's revenue growth rate is much lower than SpaceX's.

SpaceX has more potential

It's hard to say whether $80 is cheap or too expensive. The value of any stock depends on how much someone is willing to pay. But the price people are willing to pay will change over time, and **ultimate returns and cash flow determine the long-term value of any stock. **

Looking ahead, SpaceX may have tens of millions of Wi-Fi users, a thriving satellite launch business, and even a mission to Mars. The company has pioneered reusable rockets, regularly sending astronauts to the International Space Station and almost single-handedly making the United States the dominant force in global space launches.

It has shown the existing aerospace industry that testing, exploding, and retesting is a faster and cheaper way to develop reliable space systems than trying to achieve perfection every time.

SpaceX has already had an unexpectedly positive impact on the US space industry. Its amazing story may be even more rich and exciting than SpaceX's stock price.