Rocket Lab has confirmed that it’s rather more than a launch firm. One look on the firm’s most up-to-date earnings presentation reveals as a lot: its house programs enterprise, which designs, manufactures and sells satellite tv for pc parts and spacecraft, introduced in over 70% of firm income in comparison with launch in 2022, at $150.3 million versus $60.7 million, respectively.
The house programs enterprise — whose merchandise embody star trackers, response wheels, solar energy programs, separation programs and extra — additionally noticed an enormous progress in income, rising by 239% year-over-year. To fulfill this rising demand, the corporate additional introduced final yr that it was constructing out new manufacturing capabilities for response wheels, particularly.
The funding is paying off: It seems that Rocket Lab has landed a contract to offer response wheels to an unnamed mega constellation buyer. The corporate mentioned as a lot in a February press launch asserting a brand new 12Nms response wheel product, saying that the wheel is “at the moment deliberate for flight with an undisclosed massive mega constellation buyer.”
Extra not too long ago, Rocket Lab CFO Adam Spice added extra shade to this assertion, revealing that the deal is price “hundreds” of response wheels per yr.
“We entered into an settlement with a mega constellation the place it’s hundreds of response wheels per yr and far larger response wheels,” Spice mentioned at Cowen’s forty fourth Annual Aerospace/Protection and Industrials Convention in February. “What that allowed us to do is construct a devoted high-volume manufacturing facility in New Zealand and we introduced the price down by nearly an order of magnitude on these wheels.”
At a Financial institution of America occasion this Tuesday, Spice reiterated the enormity of the deal: “We secured a contract with a mega constellation buyer the place we’ll ship two or three thousand response wheels per yr to 1 buyer.”
Whereas the corporate has not publicly disclosed the title of this buyer — and declined to touch upon the matter to TechCrunch, citing industrial sensitivity — there’s solely a handful of recognized prospects. Amazon’s Mission Kuiper is one possible candidate, and OneWeb’s rising community may plausibly be one other. SpaceX has demonstrated that it desires to remain in-house as a lot as attainable for its manufacturing stack, nevertheless, so Starlink isn’t possible.
In its knowledge sheet on the 12Nms response wheel, Rocket Lab lists the bottom value at $100,000. After all, on contracts of this measurement, the value per unit is usually discounted (which Spice acknowledged, saying on the Cowen convention that the ASP for the mega constellation response wheels “got here down fairly a bit”), however it suggests an enormous win for Rocket Lab’s revenues and a attainable supply for the doubling of the corporate’s backlog final yr: from $241 million on the finish of 2021 to $503 million.
