The global space economy is already worth more than $600 billion. While SpaceX may win the headlines, the better returns could come from the companies building the ecosystem around it, like Rocket Lab Corp. (RKLB), writes Nicholas Vardy, editor of Microcap Moonshots.
AI is creating enormous demand for data and communications. And companies once dismissed as moonshots are starting to look like the infrastructure providers of a new economic frontier.
The obvious question is: Should you buy SpaceX if it goes public? That is the wrong starting point. The better question is: How do you profit from the space economy without overpaying for the most obvious winner? That distinction matters.
Rocket Lab Corp. (RKLB)
SpaceX may be one of the greatest private companies ever built. It dominates commercial launch. Starlink has become a global satellite broadband network. Reusable rockets have changed the economics of space.
But great companies can still make poor investments at the wrong price. Investors learned this lesson with Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) during the dot-com bubble. Cisco was not a fraud. It was not a joke. Yet investors who bought Cisco at the peak in 2000 spent years nursing losses.
To be clear, I am not bearish on SpaceX as a business. Quite the opposite. If I had been offered shares years ago at venture-capital prices, I would have jumped at the chance. But buying a great private company early is one thing. Buying the same company after Wall Street has slapped a heroic valuation on it is another.
In every gold rush, investors dream of owning the mine. But the steadier money is often made selling picks, shovels, and dynamite. In the space economy, that means rockets, satellites, propulsion, robotics, sensors, and communications and defense systems.
For aggressive investors, the most obvious public-market alternative to SpaceX is Rocket Lab. Rocket Lab is not SpaceX. It is far smaller. It does not have Starlink. But it is one of the few public companies with real launch capability and a growing space-systems business.
Recommended Action: Buy RKLB.
