A filing by SpaceX with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month showed that while the company’s founder and CEO, Mr. Elon Musk, saw his ownership percentage decline slightly during the year, he still managed to increase his voting control of the company’s stock.
Musk founded the company in 2000 and since then it has become the only U.S. space entity (either public or private) that can achieve regular launches and landings of its first-stage rocket boosters and conducts crewed missions for NASA, as well as operating the world’s largest satellite constellation with thousands of spacecraft.
The latest filing was signed around 2020 after the previous one, which also provided details of Musk’s ownership of SpaceX shares. At the time, SpaceX applied to the FCC for permission to launch its second-generation Starlink satellites on the Starship launch vehicle system. For lack of better wording, the application “blew up” and the company’s competitors strongly opposed it in the months that followed, citing various reasons including lack of competitiveness and violation of FCC rules.
This time, SpaceX is seeking the commission’s approval to expand its satellite Internet service, using additional frequencies to provide mobile satellite services (MSS). Currently, Starlink user terminals use a higher frequency band to communicate with satellites, allowing them to quickly send large amounts of information to Internet servers. On the other hand, the MSS bands are lower in the frequency chain, and they allow a different kind of service that includes voice and text-based communications.
The picture shows SpaceX’s filing system with the International Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission, filing number SAT-MOD-20220725-00074
The MSS filing shows that Musk held 42.3 percent of SpaceX as of the end of July 2022, in addition to his stake allowing him to control voting control of 78.2 percent of the company’s outstanding shares. These figures show that the aerospace company’s ownership structure has barely changed in a year’s time, as at that point, Musk had held 43.61% of the company while having 77.97% of voting control.
However, Musk’s ownership has gradually declined since 2018, as a November 2018 Federal Communications Commission filing revealed that the executive now owns 50.4 percent of SpaceX.
The FCC disclosure comes after SpaceX raised more money in July. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (FCC) shows the company raised $250 million in equity with five investors participating. This is one of two capital campaigns for SpaceX this year, with the previous one occurring in June and bringing in $1.7 billion through 74 investors. Cumulatively, SpaceX has raised about $2 billion in 2022 – and another $1.8 billion in the last year.
Starship is critical to SpaceX’s future, especially Starlink, especially as SpaceX moves forward with its second generation of satellites. While it currently launches about 50-60 first-generation satellites via Falcon 9 rockets, second-generation spacecraft are larger and heavier. As such, they will require larger rockets, and in this regard, Starship will be one of the world’s largest rockets, integral to SpaceX’s fleet of low Earth orbit (LEO) Internet satellites.
SpaceX is currently aiming to conduct the highly anticipated Starship orbital test flight after an earlier incident in which it had delivered a prototype of the rocket’s Booster 7 first stage to the test stand and was later forced to remove the rocket’s engine for inspection.
