Rocket Lab Interview with Sir Peter Beck and Adam Spice!

Hello everyone. Today I'm very excited to bring you an interview me and several other Rocket Lab investors had with Rocket Lab CEO Sir Peter Beck as well as CFO Adam Spice yesterday after their earnings call, which was by the way a phenomenal result and the stock is responding very well today. This video is brought to you by the channel members you see at the start of every single video. So, thank you very much to the members and if you're interested in joining them, there is a join link in the description down below as well. There's links down there to the other YouTube channels if you're interested in checking out them. I think they're all worth a follow. And now, let's go ahead and dive into the interview with Sir Peter Beck.

Sir Peter Beck, Adam Spice, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time and continuing to engage with our retail community and sharing your knowledge and insight. So, thank you so much for joining us today.

All right. So, to kick off some questions, first of all, congratulations on an amazing quarter. We were all very happy to hear all of the great news, especially the newest acquisition. I think the future is definitely very exciting. So, congratulations to both of you and the whole Rocket Lab team.

Awesome. Thanks. So yeah, no, it was a good one. Pretty big milestone getting over $200 million in revenue in a quarter. That's a good one.

Great quarter.

You know, look, this actually, May is my 8th anniversary of joining Rocket Lab, which is happy revenue. Thank you to go from zero to a couple hundred million dollar quarter is pretty epic.

No kidding.

Wow. Wow.

Yep. Yeah. A lot of things have changed. Some things still remain the same. You know, when I join, remember the original office building in New Zealand here where Pete had everybody shoehorned into a really, really small space where literally like seating was like on an airplane where literally if somebody had to get up and go to the bathroom, everybody had to get out of the aisle and let that person go to the bathroom and then same thing when they came back. So, we still keep things very tight when it comes to facilities utilization and stuff, but some things never change.

Yep.

Oh, you're tighter.

No. It must be pretty rare for the CEO to be more frugal than the CFO.

That's awesome. Cool. Well, if you don't mind, we'll kind of lead into some questions. I figured we kind of break things somewhat structurally between launch. So, we'll kind of kick things off with Electron, go into Neutron, and then go into some space systems, and then maybe ask you guys some interesting questions at the end. So, I wanted to kind of start with a bit of a rumor. We always like to put on a bit of a tin foil hat on Rocket Lab Weekly. So, several months ago, we heard a rumor floating around about an Electron launch being signed that was hosting a 500 kg payload. Now, we obviously didn't put much weight into this rumor for obvious reasons, but then recently on the Doc Twitz podcast there was a mention of Haste being able to lift up to 1.5 tons, which is in contrast to the 700 kg capacity hosted on the website. So, I assume that the discrepancy between the 700 kg versus the 1.5 tons is a bit of a mix of payload size, speed, fuel requirements, and whatnot. But Peter, is there anything you can speak to in terms of this rumored 500 kilogram Electron lift? Is it the April Fool's Electron Heavy from a few years back?

That's fair. And it sounds like Haste is going to have quite the year judging by what was mentioned on the call.

Yeah. Yeah. Haste is a really solid product for us.

So, you guys sold 31 Electron contracts in the last quarter, which is amazing. I hope I have my numbers right. It's 4:00 a.m. here. But if we extrapolate that out, it's like 120 launches in a year. This was a little bit touched on the earnings call that you guys have the factory was made for one Electron a week and you said that it would be pretty nominal, pretty small investments to actually get up to that level. But if you guys see sustained demand for Electron, what would it take to come into like 70, 80, 90 launches per year or do you ever see that happening?

Yeah, I mean most of the hypersonics missions, like all the hypersonics missions to date have been launched out of the US and so it would require flexibility from some of those customers to be able to launch out of New Zealand or we'd have to create some launch capabilities elsewhere. Because right now we're licensed to launch, I think it's a dozen times out of Wallops for Electron. I mean we're confident we could increase that to a higher rate but if you're talking about many dozens of launches it would take probably another pad just like we have multiple pads.

I have like a naming convention question and it kind of relates to Electron and all the products really in the Rocket Lab ecosystem. So, you named the small rocket Electron, the medium rocket Neutron and the spacecraft Photon. What happened to Proton? Should we anticipate that a Proton is still to come?

That would get super confusing if we started calling things Protons.

I like it.

Pete, you have an innate ability to break down concepts into a rudimentary way so people can really comprehend and digest. How feasible are data centers in space? I do believe dealing with customers like StarCloud is closer to reality than people are really giving credit for. I know I personally was skeptical, you know, six months to a year ago when people were starting to bring this up. And so it'd be interesting to hear you with your experience and obviously the recent partnerships that you've been signing.

That's good. And speaking of irons in the fire, seven new products that you guys were showing today in the call. And also, potentially Adam can answer on this piece. I know there's a lot of people out there talking about spectrum and I know you answered a question on the call today about spectrum. You guys are obviously focusing on laser terminals. Do you believe there's a recency bias for people wanting to continue in the spectrum world and spend so much in the spectrum world? And do you think people are really downplaying laser communications? And if you think so, what do you want those people to know?

Like, I don't know. I think there certainly is, I'd say, it seems like a land race right now to get spectrum, right? I think people are assuming that things are going to continue to be done the way they have been done historically. You know, are there things that could be done in a very different way that kind of get around the constraints that spectrum ownership currently dictates? It's possible. I've heard rumor, you know, throughout, I spent 25 years in the semiconductor industry before coming over to Rocket Lab and so I still kind of keep my ear to the ground there and there's rumor that people are working on some pretty interesting things that could make unlicensed spectrum bands usable for things that now require spectrum. So yeah, I mean, never underestimate the progress that can be made by these clever folks in the semiconductor world in managing the RF signal chain in such a way where they could get amazing things to come out of it. So it's possible, it certainly is possible. I think that's a bit of a ways out there and we've got some very smart people who are making spectrum buys at the moment, right? We're betting that the current way is going to continue. I mean, for us, we've always been very clear that ultimately we want to be in the constellation, you know, we want to own our own constellation, operate and generate the recurring revenue from that. What we haven't said is what does that application look like because not all applications are the same when it comes to need for owning spectrum and so forth. Obviously there's applications in things like earth observation that don't require spectrum ownership. There's likely even communications type of applications for government customers that wouldn't necessarily require you to own the spectrum. You could basically leverage spectrum that's already owned. So I think it's an open area, but certainly something that we spend a lot of time thinking about. Because clearly, our whole end-to-end space strategy and mission is yet to be fulfilled, right? We're picking off the pieces as we go along. You know, launch being we think the most difficult one to master is one that we've gotten pretty far along on. With Neutron, we'll think we'll have everything that we need. And then on the space system side, you see us continually chipping away at all the really key fundamental technologies. And again, like we mentioned on the call today, not all of those have been solved by buying things. We develop things internally. So I think that degree of freedom because we have such a strong engineering culture allows us to really not be intimidated or get pushed down one path versus another. I think everything's on the table every time we make one of these decisions. And hopefully that continues to be the case.

Thinking of moon landers, especially with the Motive acquisition fresh in mind. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman recently mentioned that he wants landers hitting the moon's south pole on a monthly cadence starting at the beginning of 2027. With Rocket Lab's extensive know-how and now with Motive in your tool belt as well, paired with the proven flight software that took Firefly's Blue Ghost to the moon last year in 2025, how difficult would it be for Rocket Lab to pivot into moon landers? Like I'm sure it's not just a matter of slapping some legs on an Explorer bus or something like that, right? How much of a pivot would that be? Especially with Motive now in house.

Yeah, no, I don't think we've ever looked at that market as being a huge TAM. And it's all about growing ourselves into increasingly large TAMs. I mean, as you can see, kind of the trajectory of our revenue growth. To move the needle, we got to do increasingly large things. And that doesn't feel like the most obvious next large thing for us to do. Although as Pete said, from an engineering discipline perspective, I have no doubt that we could do it if we chose to go kind of bite that off. But yeah, it doesn't seem like it's the next best thing for us.

That's a pretty Mars-shaped answer if you ask me.

Totally, totally. We're going to, obviously we're making a play for the MTO opportunity, which could be meaningful and exciting and everything else. But I think you've never seen, in the eight years I've been here at Rocket Lab, we've not had the obsession to just go to Mars to think about colonizing things and kind of have these big grandiose ideas because everything here has got to be commercial. I mean, that's the one thing I think is pretty unique about Rocket Lab is everything that we do is commercial. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Pete's got your Venus thing which is, you know, your one exception, even that you're funding yourself.

So as a corporation we still stay very, very, very tight to how do we make money? How do we make more money and then more money after that?

Beautiful. I have a follow-up question regarding since we are on the topic of Mars a little bit. Is that okay Scott?

Oh Scott then, sure go ahead.

Take that as a yes. So my question is and it's touching a little bit on the newest acquisition and I hope you can lend a little bit of light into that. But looking at the three founders for Motive, you have a CEO who was the Mars Phoenix and Curiosity robotic arm work expert. You have a VP of ops who worked on the Mars Pathfinder, Cassini and I think every major Mars rover robotic arm program that there is. You had the VP of business dev who spent 11 years at JPL designing extreme environment motion control for rovers. So collectively they've touched essentially every major US Mars surface robotics program over the last 25 years. You layer that onto Rocket Lab's existing Mars portfolio, your Escapade twins, your components on InSight, Perseverance, Ingenuity, and your very vocal and active MTO or MTN bid. And it starts to look like a deliberate Mars consolidation play. Is the strategy to dominate US Mars heritage regardless of which specific NASA Mars contract you win? And does owning Motive change your Mars pitch?

And I think you take that a little further. I mean the one thing that I focus more on with this Motive deal is I don't really even think about Mars and robotics as much. I thought in the context of what was really interesting and attractive for me is that just like we acquired PSC back in 2021, Planetary Systems Corp, that does the separation systems, you can have a great rocket, you have a great satellite, if you don't deploy the spacecraft properly the mission's lost, right? And so we wanted to control that risky element of the mission. And so very similarly here we get SATAs, right? So we get these solar array deployment mechanisms where we've all seen satellites that fail to deploy their solar or their antennas and you've got a botched mission. Now we've further just derisked that and it allows us to sell more bundled solutions to our customers that already buy solar solutions from us and now they can buy the solar plus the SATA and so forth. So for me there's a very clear commercial focus point for me. So I think the Mars stuff, all things Pete said, super interesting, very sexy, very motivating for the team. But for me, it just kind of further fleshes out how we just can put this whole platform solution together for our customers and derisk their missions and ultimately derisk our own missions going forward when we own the infrastructure that we're going to build.

So, does the Motive acquisition solve the SATA supply bottleneck for your own spacecraft production or is it the robotics capability, the bigger prize?

And as a Canadian, I'm not thrilled that you're moving in on the robotic arm space, but I'll give you a pass.

But I figured I'd touch on Flatlight. You know, there was a really big announcement and I haven't heard too much since then. I was just wondering if you could maybe give a little status update. You still kind of building production capacity for that or where things stand.

I was also wondering if you could give us a little bit more info on the new silicon solar cells. What makes them super unique? I felt like that kind of didn't get the attention it deserved perhaps.

Can I have a follow-up on this one? I was recently visited by a subscriber who actually has a German solar cell manufacturing startup and he was telling me a little bit about, he said somehow that currently the math is not mathing if you want to build like a giga constellation from the current silicon technology. And he said that there's a lot of R&D going into maybe getting the kilowatt price below 100 to maybe $80 per kilowatt for full arrays. And I was wondering how do you see this dynamic in the market with the cells? Like are you researching still how to make a cheaper product or you're happy with what you have currently on the market?

Okay. Awesome. And do you have contact with like, because you said that the solar cells were for space-based data centers, like you're getting ready for that. Do you have ongoing conversations with customers from this and how do you feel that market is for this type of constellations?

Well, I think everybody would agree we're very early in that both as even a concept. So naturally, if we're bringing a product to market, we want to bring one that's relevant. So we're not just going to create something in isolation. But we have, the solar team are literally the world experts in space solar. So they know all these constraints. Sometimes I think they know too much because a little bit of arrogance and the things you don't know is sometimes useful. But anyway, they're trying to solve this problem in the best way they can and it may be silicon, it may be a different substrate. But at the very least, for the scale that's been contemplated immediately, we've got a lot of products that will suit that application well.

Maybe I'll hop in with a question for Adam. Just kind of curious about the recent capital raise and the structure with the collar is kind of interesting and also you've gone up to a lot more cash than you ever have previously. Is that kind of a good time for it or what's your thinking behind some of those moves?

Yeah, like I think we were focused really on making sure that we've got dry powder to really be in a position to take advantage of opportunities when we see them. We come across deals from time to time that are competitive and sometimes we're competing with people that have much deeper pockets than we do. Some of our traditional kind of space primes in particular. So, for us, we never want to be caught flatfooted. We found ourselves in the past in deal situations where we had to go get, hey, the deal will be contingent on getting financing, which, if you spend any time dealing with banks, you'll realize that they're never really there when you need them to be, right? They'll only lend you money when you don't need it, not when you do need it. And even getting bridge financing can really throw a monkey wrench into the process. So we just never want to be flatfooted or caught on our heels with these kind of things.

Yeah, I think we've been very fortunate. We talked about on the call today that we've been raising money starting at like eight bucks even the stock was like at five, right? And so we did the capped call on that to get us up to eight. And now the cap on the most recent structured ATM was $86.11, I think, was the number. So I think we've been very, very fortunate to be raising capital at increasingly attractive prices. And hopefully we look back at this $86 cap price on a structured call and I'm as remorseful about raising money at $86 than I was when we raised it at eight, right? Because I look back and one of the things that we all beat ourselves up over here. It's like...

Yeah. I want to follow that. So, you guys are a phenomenal team and I don't know, I'm sure people have probably told you this before, but I look at you guys and I call you guys the Thanos of space because you're collecting all the stones that kind of rule the universe. So you guys have this beautiful, phenomenal team that continue to dance really well. The M&A pipeline kind of remains full, but you also make sure that the internal engineers, if it's something like you stated like Gaus or whatever, that you can build in-house for magnitudes less, you're going to go ahead and do that. Is there any other things that have recently come through that you're like, no, we're not going to pay that, we're absolutely going to do that for way less? And then second, what else are you guys missing? I mean, you've got the robotics now. You've got so many other things. I mean, what other choke points do you guys really have to collect all the stones in the universe?

Or geostationary, right?

Like all the cleared personnel just takes a long time to hire the right people, so a lot of times it comes down to people constraints. And you know, I think Pete and I were kind of chuckling a little bit at your question because we always have the debate, it's a raging debate about where do we draw the line on buying things.