Rocket Lab Founder and CEO Peter Beck Talks 'Neutron' Rocket Launch

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**David Gura** (0:13)
Shares of Rocket Lab Lower, the company signaling its Neutron Rocket, could face yet another delay pushing its bid to challenge SpaceX's Falcon 9, potentially into 2027
It's not all doom and gloom, though. Shares still up more than 12% year to date, 74% year over year. Joining us now is Rocket Lab founder, president and CEO, Peter Beck. Peter, thank you so much for joining. Can you clarify any confusion about Neutron? So yesterday, it seemed like you were pushing back the date of the launch a little bit. Is Neutron still on track to actually launch off its launch pad this year, 2026?

**Peter Beck** (0:50)
Yeah, I think I think probably headlines overblown it a little bit. You know, what I did did say is that, you know, it's getting a little bit tighter to get a launch away this year, which is, you know, just being honest and transparent.
But, you know, it's a rocket program. They're very, very difficult and complex and large programs. But our intention here is to still definitely push hard to try and get a first flight away this year. But I think the real question that should be asking is, is what about the 10th flight? Because, you know, these programs, you know, obviously first flight is important, but flight number 10 is actually really, really important because, you know, that shows that you've got into a full sense of, you know, scale and cadence and reusability, which is really, you know, the most important thing for the whole program.

**Vonnie Quinn** (1:35)
I see some of the word there, cadence. Tell us a bit about that, how you're thinking about the cadence going forward, the viable path to getting there, to a regular cadence.

**Peter Beck** (1:43)
Yeah, well, I mean, if you look at our current vehicle, Electron, you know, we actually scaled that faster than any other, you know, rocket in history. So we went from, you know, zero to 50 flights in the shortest time in history, and we're on track to get to 100 flights in the shortest time in history with that vehicle too. So we know a thing or two about, you know, taking a rocket, putting it on the pad, and then flying it over and over again. But, you know, Neutron's really important for a few reasons. I think a lot of people focus on, you know, plugging a hole from and providing competition for a Falcon 9, which is an important part of its job.
But, you know, Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company, meaning that we build satellites both for ourselves and for other people. And, you know, with our pending acquisition of Iridium, you know, we really need our rocket to launch our own satellites. And so, you know, at least 50% of electrons, sorry, Neutron's capacity is going to be consumed by ourselves.

**David Gura** (2:37)
Obviously, SpaceX was able to raise a humongous amount of cash recently. Peter, how do you intend to continue to raise cash in order to fund some of these expensive endeavours?

**Peter Beck** (2:50)
Well, I think we're a little bit different than SpaceX. You know, Elon has very grand aspirations that require a lot of cash. You know, for us, you know, we're in the business of getting into cash flow positivity as quickly as we can.
And if you look at, you know, some of the acquisitions that we've done in the past and about to do, you know, that puts us in that realm very, very quickly. And I think we have a very different sort of profile to the other two big Rocket guys. You know, we start off where I'm certainly not the richest, you know, two of the richest people in the world are our competitors. So they have a totally different, you know, cost of capital and sense of capital.
We've always been that Rocket company that has had to be very commercial from day one. And, you know, we're about building a good solid book and, you know, a commercial enterprise that's enduring and making money.

**Vonnie Quinn** (3:47)
I look at the report, backlog, $2.36 billion with 90 plus launches here. How should we look at that? How should investors look at that backlog? And at what point does it become something that should maybe raise some concern with investors if it gets to be a certain size or, you know, it gets to grow bigger and bigger again?

**Peter Beck** (4:04)
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I think everybody loves a great big backlog. And I think in between the last quarter and now we added nearly a billion dollars of backlog to the company. So, but backlog is a great metric, but execution is the true measure. And if you look at the company, I think we have established ourselves as a very strong executors previously and throughout history.