Space company Rocket Lab USA (RKLB) is a leading satellite launcher globally. It has gained in double digits since its stock market debut on August 25. However, given its stretched valuation and negative profit margins, is RKLB a good investment now?.End-to-end space company Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (RKLB) primarily develops and sells small-class launch vehicles and ancillary launch services. Its leading orbital small launch vehicle Electron has delivered 105 satellites through 18 successful missions as of September 30, 2021. Electron is the second most frequently launched rocket by companies in the United States. RKLB is the fourth most frequent satellite launcher globally.
RKLB went public on August 25, 2021, through a reverse merger with blank check company Vector Acquisition. Since then, the stock has gained 17.7% to close yesterday’s trading session at $12.28. The company raised $777 million in gross proceeds through this merger, valuing RKLB at $4.80 billion. Regarding this, RKLB CEO Peter Beck said, “It’s a tremendous amount of capital ... really puts us in a position not only to be aggressive in our organic growth but aggressive on our inorganic growth as well.”
However, RKLB is currently operating in a highly competitive market, with several aeronautical companies gaining prominence. Popular start-ups such as Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (NYSE:SPCE), Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are some of the biggest competitors of RKLB, despite the differentiated operations.