Rocket Labs Cashes Checks and Snaps Necks After Winning $816M of Uncle Sam’s Money…

The dark pools have entered the chat… 

You know… some companies spend years preaching and telling investors they’re “more than just XYZ”. But Rocket Lab didn’t bother. It just showed up with a Dick Cheney sized $816 million contract from the U.S. Space Development Agency and let the check do the talking. Bigly.

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, this deal is the largest in the company’s history… and no longer is this your kid brothers Rocket company. This one is for building 18 missile-tracking satellites with actual, grown-up defense hardware on them. The kind that watches hypersonic missiles and makes the Pentagon’s insatiable appetite for spending our tax dollars justified. Add that to the $515M Rocket Lab already won from the same agency, and suddenly this “fun size” rocket company has over $1.3B in signed government work. 

(Source: Rocket Lab) 

Naturally, the market noticed the big swingin’ bulge this put on the balance sheet. Rocket Lab ripped +17% on the day and is now up nearly 190% YTD, which is what happens when investors realize you’re no longer selling launches… you’re selling national security. That said, this contract is all about satellites, sensors, manufacturing, and integration. Translation: Rocket Lab is quietly becoming a vertically integrated space prime, aka the thing that actually makes money when defense budgets get impregnated. Which means, this puts Rocket Lab in the same orbit as Northrop, Lockheed, L3Harris… except Rocket Lab doesn’t have a 1970s cost structure or a pension problem. They build fast, they build in-house, and now they build for Uncle Sam.

In fact, founder Peter Beck basically said the quiet part out loud: this isn’t a one off. Rocket Lab plans to bid on multi-billion-dollar DoD programs next. Think: Golden Dome, Missile tracking, persistent coverage… a.k.a., all the unsexy stuff that prints checks for decades. Meaning, sure Rocket Lab is still launching rockets courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue… but that’s not the story anymore. The story is that a former “small launch disruptor” just locked itself into the defense-industrial complex, and Wall Street finally realized this thing isn’t trading like a weird science script anymore. 

Live look at the Rocket Lab board room… 

(Source: Giphy) 

So yeah… who needs AI buzzwords when you have the government somersaulting to give you money? That’s exactly the place Rocket Lab is in. For investors, have a day… for those on the sidelines, keep your eyes on Rocket Lab going forward. Until next time, friends…

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.