SpaceX posted its first profit since going public, reporting third-quarter net income of $4.4 billion on revenue that more than doubled, and Elon Musk told investors on the earnings call that he favors merging the company with Tesla.
Revenue was $14.58 billion, up 161% from a year earlier and well above the $12.72 billion analysts had expected, according to Reuters. Earnings came to 35 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast 14 cents.
The growth did not come from rockets. SpaceX said its Super Intelligence segment brought in $7.56 billion, up 830% from a year ago, making it the company’s largest business for the first time. The company tied the jump to new cloud services agreements, its acquisition of the coding startup Cursor and wider use of its Grok models.
Starlink still grew fast. The connectivity segment, built around the satellite internet service, produced $5.25 billion, up 69%, and subscribers reached 13.6 million. The space segment, which covers launches, added $1.77 billion.
Spending grew with the revenue. Capital expenditures hit $19.6 billion in the quarter, and most of that money went into AI infrastructure.
The merger talk came near the end of the call. Musk, who runs both companies, said SpaceX and Tesla have each formed committees of independent directors, at the request of shareholders, to discuss combining the two. He said he cannot sit in on those talks because of his conflict of interest.
Asked whether a merger was a good idea, he did not dodge it. There is “a lot of merit to combining the companies,” Musk said, according to CNN. Any deal would still need shareholder approval.
It was only the second earnings report since SpaceX’s June initial public offering, which raised about $85.7 billion. Shares rose in after-hours trading Tuesday. Tesla reports its own third-quarter results on Wednesday.
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