Musk: Starlink Not Yet Ready To Go Public Due To Cash Flow

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he will wait on taking his Starlink satellite broadband service public until its cash flow can be counted on.

“Going public sooner than that would be very painful,” he tweeted.

Starlink is currently operated by Musk’s SpaceX exploration company. The way such a service would work long term is that customers could connect to the internet via a satellite dish placed on or near their property.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said last year that Starlink could be spun off from SpaceX in an initial public offering (IPO), CNBC reported.

Musk’s new tweet on the topic came after a Twitter user asked the billionaire: “Any thoughts on Starlink IPO we would love to invest in the future.”

In order to provide the speedy internet needed for performing financial transactions even out in remote campsites for example, broadband internet access will need to be dramatically boosted. That’s especially true in rural areas and in such locations as way out to sea or in mid-air.

That’s a goal of Starlink’s network of low-Earth orbit satellites, which CNBC reported “can beam high-speed, low-latency internet to the ground.”

In a March 8 tweet, Musk said SpaceX is working on antennas that can be installed on planes, ships, large trucks and RVs to pull down Starlink’s internet service, no matter where on Earth they are. At the time, he said that the idea was to connect the internet service to those types of vehicles.

Since the launch of the first 60 satellites in the Starlink network on May 23, 2019, SpaceX has blasted more than a thousand of the devices into low-Earth orbit, PYMNTS reported.

While other space-based internet satellites orbit higher than 22,000 miles above the Earth, the Starlink satellites circle at a distance of just 340 miles. This means that the time it takes for signals to travel between Earth-based devices and the satellites is much lower — at least theoretically.