Home Depot
carries a lot of products: Duct tape, hand tools, lawn care, plumbing supplies, and space-based Wi-Fi. Wait, what?
That’s right. The building materials and hardware retailer now offers SpaceX’s Starlink base stations for $600.
The distribution agreement is another example of why SpaceX is a unique company and how space-based services are going mainstream.
Neither company announced the agreement with much fanfare. Starlink terminals just showed up on the
Home Depot
(ticker: HD) website.
Starlink is the Wi-Fi product from Elon Musk’s SpaceX. His company has put roughly 4,000 Starlink satellites in orbit. That constellation, as the industry refers to a cluster of satellites, is capable of delivering high-speed internet service to Earth. It costs about $110 a month and is better in rural areas, without interference from a lot of tall buildings. Along with the monthly fee there’s the one-time fee for the receiving hardware.
Expanding distribution can be good for companies. SpaceX stock, however, isn’t publicly traded. Shares do trade limited volumes on exchanges that deal in stock of private companies. Recent trading values the space company at roughly $140 billion. Most of that value is due to the potential for the Starlink business.
Home Depot has a market capitalization of about $300 billion. Its shares aren’t getting a bump from carrying Starlink. Shares were flat in premarket trading Tuesday.
S&P 500
and
Dow Jones Industrial Average
futures were both down about 0.2%.
According to the Home Depot website, Starlink systems are already out of stock. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about its distribution agreement or any profits generated by selling terminals.
SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about its Starlink business. It ended 2022 with about one million subscribers.
One million subscribers isn’t enough to support a $140 billion valuation, but the number is growing, partly thanks to Home Depot.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
Read the full article here