Nasa’s small step to the Moon a giant leap for Rocket Lab<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe listed company any will have a cash balance of US$750m, Rocket Lab said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Rocket Lab has made its name internationally by launching some 97 micro-satellites into space over 18 launches from Mahia over the past three years on its 12m tall Electron Rocket, which has a payload capacity of around 150kg.<\/p>\n
Proceeds from the launch will be used to develop a much larger “medium-lift” rocket capable of taking an 8 ton (7200kg) payload into space.<\/p>\n
The new rocket will be “tailored for mega constellations, deep space missions and human spaceflight”.<\/p>\n
The new rocket will put Rocket Lab more closely in competition with Elon Musk’s privately-held Space X, which recently raised funds at a US$74b private equity valuation.<\/p>\n
Current Rocket Lab investors will retain 82 per cent of shares after the listing.<\/p>\n
Exact stakes haven’t been disclosed, but current investors include Beck – who servers as CEO, early investors Sir Stephen Tindall and Mark Rocket, and the investment wing of ACC, which put money in during a 2018 round US$140m raise at a US$1b private equity valuation.<\/p>\n
And, on the US side, defence giant Lockheed Martin plus a clutch of Silicon Valley private equity firms including Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Data Collective.<\/p>\n
The Australian government’s Future Fund participated in the US$140 fund and is said to today be one of Rocket Lab’s largest institutional investors – and in line for a $1b windfall with the Nasdaq listing. When Rocket Lab opened its Auckland assembly plant and Mission Control in 2018, a senior executive expressed regret that investment talks with NZ’s Super Fund had ultimately gone nowhere.<\/p>\n
Rocket Lab is currently in the process of recruiting 90 more staff, which will take its full complement to around 700 – around two-thirds of whom are based in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Beck, who left school to become a Fisher & Paykel Appliances apprentice, founded Rocket Lab in 2006, with Mark Rocket joining him as an early backer.<\/p>\n
The pair would later part ways after Rocket’s discomfort with the company’s US military contracts. The R&D money from US Department of Defense agency Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and would go on to stage launches for the US Air Force and other Defense-related agencies.<\/p>\n
Beck has always emphasised that his company has only launched research not operational satellites for US government clients, and that many defence technologies – such as the internet and GPS – have been dual use and of considerable public benefit.<\/p>\n
This year, the company’s “Photon” satellite bus will be used to ferry a Nasa satellite into lunar orbit as part of the US space agency’s Capstone mission to return astronauts to the moon.<\/p>\n
And Beck says a privately-funded mission will see a satellite sent to Venus in 2023 to investigate indications of phosphine in the planet’s upper atmosphere – a gas produced as a byproduct of organic life.<\/p>\n
Also on the agenda is the first launch from Rocket Lab’s first launch complex outside of New Zealand – hosted at Nasa’s Wallops Island facility in the US state of Virginia.<\/p>\n
Beck says certain US government clients demanded a US launch site, but that the bulk of Rocket Lab’s launches will always be from NZ – purely because our relatively empty skies and shipping lanes made it much easier to launch rockets at high frequency. His company’s near-term goal is a launch per fortnight.<\/p>\n
2019 financials<\/h2>\n
On February 10 this year, Rocket Lab filed its financials for its 2019 financial year (which coincided with the calendar year).<\/p>\n
They reveal an operation that was, at the time, breakeven.<\/p>\n
The accounts show total revenue of $89.9m, up from 2018’s $46.3m.<\/p>\n
Expenses also doubled to $93.9m from the prior year’s $47.6m.<\/p>\n
After depreciation and other factors, Rocket Lab squeaked to a $32,000 profit.<\/p>\n
Rocket Lab had six launches in 2019. It would go on to have seven in 2020 and, so far this year, has staged one, with a second in the offing.<\/p>\n
In its listing statement today, the company said it projected revenue of US$750m by 2025.<\/p>\n
Source: Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kiwi-American company Rocket Lab, founded by Aucklander Peter Beck, has confirmed plans for a US stock exchange at a market cap of US$4.1 billion ($5.7b) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":108326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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