Yesterday, SpaceX published its quarterly results.
They were excellent.
But today, I want to focus on just one part of the business: Starlink.
Several years ago, I answered a question on Quora:
“Will Starlink make Elon Musk the richest and/or most powerful man in the world?”
At the time, SpaceX had launched only around 400 satellites.
Yet my conclusion was already the same.
I believed Starlink would become far more important than most investors imagined.
Not simply because it could provide internet access to rural areas.
But because it had the potential to become the world’s first truly global internet network built from space.
That conviction was based largely on SpaceX’s planned launch cadence and the number of satellites required to eventually provide global coverage.
Several years later, yesterday’s earnings tell a very interesting story.
Starlink is now SpaceX’s largest source of revenue.
The Connectivity segment generated $4.29 billion in quarterly revenue, representing more than 55% of the company’s total revenue.
Revenue grew 66% year over year, while the subscriber base continues to expand at an impressive pace.
But I actually find another conclusion even more interesting.
For years, most investors viewed SpaceX as a space company that happened to be building an internet service.
Today, you could almost argue the opposite.
SpaceX has become an internet infrastructure company that also happens to operate a space business.
And ironically, its space business is what gives it its greatest competitive advantage.
No other company can manufacture its own satellites, launch them on its own rockets, replenish its constellation at such a rapid pace, and control almost every part of the value chain.
That is exactly what led me, a little over a year ago, to begin documenting my Satellite Internet portfolio.
Interestingly, SpaceX is not one of the positions.
Simply because it wasn’t publicly traded at the time.
More importantly, my thesis was never really about SpaceX.
It can be summarized in one sentence:
Satellite internet will become a new layer of global infrastructure, creating an entirely new ecosystem of publicly traded companies.
In other words, the real question was never:
“Will SpaceX succeed?”
The real question was:
What happens when a new global infrastructure begins to be deployed?
History shows that every major infrastructure creates its own ecosystem.
When railroads were built, the biggest winners were not only the railway companies.
Steel producers, locomotive manufacturers, banks financing the expansion, and coal suppliers all benefited from the build-out.
Building the infrastructure itself is often a very long-term investment thesis.
But the companies supplying the materials, components, and services required to deploy that infrastructure often benefit much earlier.
That is exactly the approach we try to take at Macro Notes.
Rather than simply identifying the future winner, we try to understand which ecosystem is emerging and which companies are likely to benefit before the market fully appreciates the opportunity.
That is precisely what the Satellite Internet portfolio was built to do.
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In the Premium section, I’ll walk through the thesis in much greater detail.
We’ll look at why I chose AST SpaceMobile, Globalstar, and EchoStar, what worked, what didn’t, and why the portfolio has now returned +258.8%.
Most importantly, we’ll answer the question that matters today:
Most importantly, we'll explore how Starlink's latest results change this investment thesis—and where the next opportunities may emerge.