Rocket Lab presented at the Bank of America Virtual SMID Conference yesterday. You can watch the recording here. Some quick notes:

• Rocket Lab is, and can continue to be, selective in their customer choice - choosing to work very strategically to choose high margin work that benefits all parties.
• Defense/Government segment of the business helps insulate the company in more constrained environments.
• They continue to make progress on the margin front for both launch and space systems. They are ahead of expected progress on the space systems side of the business.
• Pent up commercial demand and increasing government budgets are driving significant opportunity on the space systems front.
• Highlights strategic importance of relationships with Varda, Earth Intelligence, and direct to mobile customers in driving the scale of Rocket Lab’s business and shareholder value.
• Importance of vertical integration: Can deliver value to the customer across space systems and launch fronts. Minimizes risk, complexity, and cost for the customer.
• Neutron development costs will ramp (as expected) through 2024 with an expected first launch still planned for Q4.
• No planned short term M&A. Company has significant assets with current portfolio.
• Virgin Orbit acquisition gives the company the extra footprint it needed to enable the kinds of scale they want to achieve. Company can evolve into a “serialized producer” of components or spacecraft.
• On target for 15 Electron launches in 2023 and 20 in 2024 with average sale price hitting the $7.5M target average.
• HASTE demand is expected to scale on both the civil and defense front. Low single digit HASTE launches are planned for 2023 and 2024 but after that customers might need on the order of “tens of launches” to operationalize a product.
• Counter-hypersonic system development is expected to become a significant market, possible the largest market, in the next couple of years.
• Recovery programs are on track and expected to provide significant margin support in the future.
• Initial development of spacecraft for customers like Varda and MDA could be leveraged to develop platforms that could be serialized for mass production later.
• Key milestones for Neutron in 2023 continue to be “frosty tanks” and “hot fire” as stage 2 cryogenic starts and Archimedes testing ramps up.
• Current small launch competition is limited. The only real operational competition is Northrop Grumman’s Minotaur which is significantly more expensive at ~$30-40M per launch compared to Electron’s $7.5M.
• The most significant medium launch competitor is the SpaceX Falcon 9.
• Target 20x reuse for Neutron (vs ~10 for Falcon 9). This is primarily achieved by running Archimedes significantly under its full potential.
• Key space systems competition is on the solar front in Boeing’s Spectrolab and Germany’s Azur Space. “We have been happy to let those competitors fill up their fabs with lower margin work.”
• Space grade solar is incredibly constrained which allows Rocket Lab to continue to be very strategic in customer selection or prioritize product for in-house use while competitors struggle with supply chain constraints.