Rocket Lab Corporation (RKLB)

Priced as of 2026-09-11 — market data goes stale within days; treat this as a starting point, not a current quote.

Rocket Lab's Sum-of-the-Parts (SOTP — adding up a separate fair value for each business line instead of valuing the whole company at once) valuation puts central fair value at **$13.97–$14.11 per share**, roughly 78% below the current $63.38 price. That answer now comes from deliberately *neutral* assumptions, not cautious ones: both Strategic Business Units (SBUs) are valued off the freshest revenue base available (trailing twelve months through June 30, 2026, not the stale FY2025 annual figures), and both are valued at the **midpoint** of a defensible peer range rather than its floor. Doing that raised central fair value by about 50% versus the previous run — from $9.39 to $14.11 — and the AVOID still stands, because the price rose too and the gap remains enormous. The single most important number here is this: **the current price sits 268% above the generous end of the fair-value band.** Even if every discretionary call in this analysis is set to its most favourable defensible level — the highest peer multiple in the comp set applied to *both* segments — fair value only reaches $17.20. Per the Decision Framework, a price above the generous fair value is the clearest AVOID this method can produce: no defensible assumption set inside this methodology justifies $63.38. Two honest caveats keep conviction at Moderate rather than High. First, **68.4% of Total Fair Enterprise Value comes from a flagged placeholder.** Space Systems is Rocket Lab's largest segment (70.7% of trailing-twelve-month revenue), and Stage 4 of this pipeline explicitly declined to classify it because no sourced market-share figure exists for the small-satellite-bus segment. This valuation carries it at a sector midpoint, which is a known unknown rather than a researched figure. When placeholders drive more than about 20% of Total Fair EV, `valuation_rules.md` requires saying so plainly, so: **this whole SOTP is a range, not an estimate.** Second, Rocket Lab's pending $8.0 billion acquisition of Iridium Communications is deliberately excluded from the bridge below because it has not closed — and it would roughly double the company's revenue base if it does. What the AVOID rests on is that neither caveat changes the direction. Stress-testing both — running the placeholder across its full sector range, and separately crediting Iridium in full at the price Rocket Lab agreed to pay — moves fair value to at most $17.64. The gap never closes. The market is not paying for the two segments this SOTP can see; it is paying for the pre-revenue Neutron rocket and a vertically-integrated future, and this methodology structurally cannot value those.

Fair-value band

Rather than a single point estimate, this valuation reports a range: every discretionary judgment call set to its defensible low end, its midpoint, and its high end.

Price sits above the generous fair value — no defensible assumption set justifies it.

Portfolio at a glance

Key assumptions & swing factors

• Space Systems' 7.78x multiple is a flagged sector-midpoint placeholder, not a researched figure, and drives 68.4% of central Total Fair Enterprise Value - far above the ~20% threshold at which valuation_rules.md requires stating that the whole SOTP is a range rather than an estimate. Its full sector range (5.11x-10.45x) is spanned by the conservative and generous cases and the AVOID survives at both ends.
• Space Systems' BCG quadrant is unresolved, inherited directly from Stage 4's explicit non-placement (High Growth confirmed at 28.0% CAGR; no sourced share percentage for the small-satellite-bus segment). It is treated as neither a Star nor a Question Mark.
• Revenue base is trailing twelve months to June 30, 2026 (Launch Services $225.0M, Space Systems $544.1M), per Rule C, replacing the FY2025 annual figures used in the July 2026 run. The segment split reconciles exactly to the $769.15M TTM total reported by stockanalysis.com.
• The pending $8.0bn Iridium Communications acquisition is excluded from the SOTP bridge because it has not closed. Status as of September 11, 2026: still pending but materially advanced - HSR antitrust waiting period expired August 12, 2026; Form S-4 registration effective (424B3 filed); FCC licence-transfer applications filed August 10, 2026 and still pending; Iridium shareholder vote scheduled September 24, 2026; expected close still mid-2027. Terms unchanged at $27.00 cash plus stock, ~$54.00 per share, with the exchange ratio pinned at its most dilutive 0.4000 because RKLB trades below the $67.50 floor.
• Illustrative post-close check, not in the bridge: crediting Iridium at the full $8.0bn enterprise value agreed, netting the ~$2.86bn cash consideration and ~$2.28bn assumed Iridium net debt, and adding 42.4M new shares gives $17.64 per share - still 72% below the current price. The AVOID does not depend on excluding the deal.
• Comp set built on matched basis per Rule B2: every multiple is Enterprise Value divided by GAAP trailing-twelve-month revenue, measured on the same date (September 11, 2026) as Rocket Lab's own price. No EV/EBITDA valuation is possible - Rocket Lab discloses no segment EBITDA and its consolidated GAAP and Adjusted EBITDA are both negative.
• Rule A cross-check on EV/Gross Profit removed two endpoints on stated grounds: SpaceX (SPCX, public since June 12, 2026) at 84.95x EV/Revenue, because its revenue is majority Starlink broadband and Stage 4 scoped it out of Rocket Lab's launch market; and Voyager Technologies at 12.61x EV/Revenue, because its 114.8x EV/Gross Profit sits 2.6x above every other comp on 10.9% gross margins and 10.6% growth. Including SpaceX would give a central fair value near $32, still 49% below the price.
• Conviction is capped at Moderate by the Decision Framework's additional rule because the largest SOTP component (Space Systems, 68.4% of Total Fair EV) rests on Stage 4's unresolved classification. The cap reflects uncertainty in the size of the gap, not its direction.
• Segment gross margin is not disclosed; the Rule A cross-check applies Rocket Lab's consolidated H1 2026 gross margin of 37.1% to each SBU individually.
• The pre-revenue Neutron medium-lift rocket is structurally excluded from this SOTP. It has not flown and is targeting a debut by end-2026. Along with Iridium, it is the most likely explanation for the market charging 46.5x revenue against a peer set trading at 5.11x-10.45x.
• Dilution headwind noted qualitatively, not forecast: shares outstanding rose 10.0% in H1 2026 (543.6M to 598.2M) and a $1.944bn at-the-market equity programme was launched August 13, 2026 to fund the Iridium cash consideration.
• Launch Services revenue fell 4.4% year-on-year in Q2 2026 ($44.6M vs $46.6M) even though first-half revenue rose 31.6%; the FY2025 growth rate of 58.7% recorded in Stage 4 is no longer current.