Rocket LabRKLB
The balance sheet finally matches the manifest. A $355M convertible note refinanced the legacy debt with a 2029 maturity and a conversion price ($5.13) that is already deep in the money — meaning the paper will almost certainly convert rather than come due in cash. With ~$829M of cash and 288% revenue growth, this is the one pre-profitability launch provider that is not racing a funding clock.
ARI FACTOR BREAKDOWN
The AstraVeris composite risk score decomposes into factor-level components. Each factor carries a confidence tag — computed means the score is derived from live data (SEC filings, USAspending, launch pipeline), partial means only some inputs are available, default means a stage-prior is applied where the company has no direct signal.
| Factor | Score / 10 | Confidence | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch Reliability | 7.0 | Computed | 79 launches, 94.9% success rate LL2 manifest + GCAT crosswalk |
| Technology Maturity | 7.4 | Computed | 909 active satellites serviced, 79 launches operated, founded 2006 (20y) |
| Management Stability | 7.0 | Partial | Public, age-adjusted prior 7.0/10 CEO tenure and board turnover feeds pending |
| Financial Health | 4.9 | Computed | Revenue $602M, net loss ≈33% of revenue, EBITDA negative 10-K — SEC Form 10-K, FY2025 |
| Debt Leverage | 8.5 | Computed | Net cash $676M, total debt $152M (pre-convert), cash $829M |
| Cash Runway | 8.5 | Computed | Cash $829M, implied ~50mo runway at current burn |
| Revenue Concentration | 5.5 | Computed | 6 prime awards across 2 federal agencies ($31M) USAspending.gov, rolling 3y window — commercial backlog not yet decomposed here |
| Competitive Position | 5.5 | Computed | Small-launch cohort < 3 — global fallback applied, 909 active sats lifted, $31M federal contracts |
| Market Size | 5.4 | Computed | Launch & reusable rockets TAM $9.3B, 11% CAGR |
| Growth Trajectory | 9.0 | Computed | Revenue growth 288.1% YoY (FY2024 → FY2025) |
| Contract Backlog | 4.5 | Computed | 6 awards totaling $31.0M tracked in federal contract feed Company-reported backlog of $1.85B (incl. $816M missile-warning satellite contract) not yet integrated from 10-K MD&A |
| Supply Chain Resilience | stage prior | Stage Prior | No company-level disclosure; extractor not yet populated |
| Regulatory Exposure | stage prior | Stage Prior | FAA AST license history available in pipeline; not yet rolled into ARI |
| Customer Diversification (Commercial) | stage prior | Stage Prior | Only federal customer concentration currently scored |
| Geographic / Launch-Site Concentration | stage prior | Stage Prior | LC-1 Māhia and Wallops available from launch events; not yet scored |
| Insurance / Underwriting Signal | stage prior | Stage Prior | Seradata claims feed not subscribed (deferred) |
| ESG / Governance | stage prior | Stage Prior | Not a standard ARI input in v1.0 methodology |
| Program Execution (On-Time Delivery) | stage prior | Stage Prior | Launch slip distribution tracked; roll-up into ARI pending |
| Workforce / Hiring Velocity | stage prior | Stage Prior | Not disclosed at quarterly cadence |
| IP / Moat Depth | stage prior | Stage Prior | Patent feed not yet ingested |
DEBT MATURITY WALL
CASH RUNWAY ANATOMY
Rocket Lab closed FY2025 with $828.7M of cash and short-term investments, against a trailing operating burn that our model imputes from net loss plus working-capital changes. The result is a runway of roughly 50 months, which is three to five times the median for the launch peer set and wider than every other pre-profit launch provider we track. This is not "healthy by comparison" — it is structurally different: the company refinanced legacy obligations into 2029 convertibles and has capital to fund Neutron qualification without going back to equity markets.
The number is an implied runway, not a company-stated figure. We derive it as (cash + short-term investments) ÷ trailing-four-quarter cash operating loss, scaled by 12. It does not credit the $1.85B backlog (which pulls cash forward as milestones close) or the $816M missile-warning satellite award (which is multi-year). It also does not debit the Neutron ramp capex, which the 10-K indicates will accelerate through first flight. So the true point estimate is a band — wider if Neutron slips, narrower if the company chooses to pull capacity in.
The financial-health factor still scores 4.9/10, which reads oddly next to the strong runway. That is the methodology doing its job: profitability and runway are separate signals. Rocket Lab is decisively solvent; it is not yet decisively profitable. The convertible is the bridge the market has priced to handle that gap.
PEER COMPARISON · LAUNCH SERVICES
| Rank | Company | Ticker | ARI | Cash Runway | Ownership |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SpaceX | — | 70.6 | profitable (est.) | Private |
| 2 | United Launch Alliance | — | 69.9 | profitable (est.) | Private (BA/LMT JV) |
| 3 | Rocket Lab | RKLB | 68.7 | ~50 mo | Public |
| 4 | Blue Origin | — | 68.0 | stage prior | Private |
| 7 | Firefly Aerospace | FLY | 51.9 | ~32 mo | Public |
Rocket Lab is the only top-5 launch peer with a publicly disclosed runway in the green tier. SpaceX and ULA are private; Blue Origin's cash position is not disclosed and falls to a stage-prior neutral estimate.
RECENT EVENTS
- 2026-03-28Successful Electron launch from Māhia: "Daughter of the Stars" deploys LEO-PNT Pathfinder-A to SSO — 20th consecutive Electron success.
- 2026-0210-K filed (SEC accession 0001819994-26-000013) with $355M 4.25% convertible notes due Feb 2029 re-disclosed; cash & short-term investments $828.7M.
- 2026-02-23NASA Goddard issues $391K study contract for Mars end-to-end communication service architectures (USAspending).
- 2025-12-21Electron delivers QPS-SAR-15 for iQPS — 13th dedicated mission in the QPS SAR campaign.
- 2024-09-19AFRL award $8.0M ("SSPACE" — Space Solar Power Advancement for Constellation-class Expansion Star), extending the solar-array / space-solar-power franchise (USAspending).
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Request a deeper analysis Join the intelligence waitlist →METHODOLOGY
The AstraVeris Risk Index (ARI) composites twenty factors across financial health, operational reliability, competitive positioning, and capital structure. Company-level inputs are drawn from SEC EDGAR 10-K / 10-Q filings, USAspending.gov federal award feeds, the AstraVeris launch pipeline (LL2 / FAA / NextSpaceflight), and company-reported 8-K material events. Debt-tranche extraction runs quarterly against 10-K footnotes via a local Gemma model — no Claude API touches the financial data. Read more on the methodology page, browse the full finance dashboard, or see Rocket Lab's raw company profile at /companies/rocket_lab/.