One of the categories targeted is companies that will benefit from space-focused enterprises. This includes space companies that improve Internet infrastructure.
E.g. if SpaceX is successful with Starlink, it will increase the total available market for Netflix and Netflix revenue increases. JD and Meituan can access more customers, though it is as likely to be via a China-raised LEO fleet. John Deere from Internet-connected autonomous combines and more precise weather and crop health analysis from space informing them where and how to service the crops.
Seems a little weak-linked to me, and the best I could do to defend this portfolio is that it's taking a super long view. But that is their rationale.
A strikingly small % of China's land area has 4G service. It's focused on the high-population areas, but at best, it appears to be 10% of the land area[0]
900 Million of China's 1.4 Billion citizens have Internet access. That leaves 36%, or, 500,000,000 people, more than the population of North America, as an untapped Internet market.
The first link you provided is from China Unicom, the 3rd player in China, behind China mobile and China telecom, whose revenue in 2019 is 7B+, 9B+, 18B+, strikingly %, of course...
No, not a China expert. Just wondering, like other HNers, why ARKX includes these Chinese e-commerce firms and trying to find an explanation. If you know of one that can pass for logical, I'd be glad to hear it.
As far as my own efforts, from the source cited, (which is 'nperf.com' and as far as I can see, not associated with any of the 3 services), You can see the coverage area of each service by selecting their drop downs. I looked at all 3, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom. The maps of the three services show very limited coverage areas for all 3 services, relative to the land area of China. If those maps are inaccurate, perhaps you can point me to one that is accurate.
Thanks for your link. It states that the service is available in most villages, but that does not mean in and of itself that the villagers are using it. The additional information of 900 million Internet users vs. 1.4 billion citizens suggests they are not all using it. To that point, your link indicates you're on target, since the satellites don't deliver directly to the brain and they'll need a device that would put them on 4G anyway.
Oh sorry, I was too trigger happy with people claiming facts on China affairs without much backing.
As for your data, I read nperf FAQ, it states they have 350 global servers. I am not sure how good that covers.
And geo coverage vs population coverage, is another important factor, as Chinese people tend to live in much higher density partly because the livable lands are more concentrated, partly because that's a top down design to improve manageability and efficiency.
Someone on Twitter was suggesting that they picked Meituan only because it has a delivery robot called Space-Pod. Lol.
Or in other words, they did a Ctrl+F: "space", in the filings of publicly traded companies and they built the index with the ones that had a match for the word.
As far as John Deere goes I think it has to do with the presumed equipment that they could design and send to mars for colonization.
There was a conference SpaceX put on a year or two ago with a bunch of companies traditionally un-releated to space but would be in a good positions to start producing needed goods that SpaceX would want to send on the first 100s of Starships.
I am reading Peter Thiel's book about startups, and he discusses the nature of technological monopolies. It says how most tech monopolies have common attributes: proprietary software, network effects, economies of scale, and a solid brand. It looks to me like those companies have all of that.
It seems like the main company everyone would be buying if they were public is SpaceX. So, that leaves space launch companies that are being crushed by SpaceX, and other companies that can make other space-related products or otherwise profit from space exploration.
My impression is that we're getting really close to being able to launch substantial payloads to Mars relatively cheaply, but now that it's time to start packing we don't know what to send. There should be whole industries gearing up to manufacture space suits, rovers, habitats, habitat construction equipment, mining and earth-moving (or is the proper term Mars-moving?) equipment, giant Mars-suitable solar arrays, equipment to generate methane from solar power, water, and C02, and so on. Maybe all that's happening behind the scenes in a non-visible way, but still it seems like there's an opportunity there.
I couldn't help noticing that ARK's logo looks suspiciously like the logo for the Outer Planets Alliance from The Expanse. Too bad their ticker isn't BLTALWDA.
My impression is that we're getting really close to being able to launch substantial payloads to Mars relatively cheaply, but now that it's time to start packing we don't know what to send.
We should industrially colonize the Moon. If we can produce oxygen, aluminum, titanium, iron, and glass on the Moon, it will make a bunch of other space infrastructure a lot cheaper. Solar Power satellites would become feasible, and then we wouldn't need fusion outside of having The Expanse-level of space military tech and other ultra high-spec space vehicle needs. And if we did have fusion, He3 would practically be a side effect of mining the other materials.
If the justification investing into space/moon infrastructure will make constructing further space/moon infrastructure cheaper, then that's a circular argument, it's the "how, not why" about the most efficient way to produce some terminal goal, but it does not assert how large the benefit of that terminal goal is going to be.
For earth needs, it's cheaper and simpler and more efficient to mine titanium right here. There's a reasonable argument that mining all these things for space needs could be more efficient if done "on site", however, what are those space needs that will ultimately somehow benefit the people of Earth in a way that's more efficient than doing it down here?
If the end goal is to produce power, no matter how you invest into space tech, IMHO it's going to be much more efficient to build large quantities of solar panels on Earth and place them in Sahara desert, than to construct a large-scale solar panel industry on the moon to have the same quantity of power through satellites. Sure, they'd be cool, but that's not a justification.
When/if there's a resource shortage on earth causing some minerals to be orders of magnitude more expensive than today, then it would be worthwhile, but not yet.
> If the justification investing into space/moon infrastructure will make constructing further space/moon infrastructure cheaper, then that's a circular argument
Not really. If we have mining AND manufacturing capabilities outside Earth's gravity well, we can manufacture things very cheaply. Either things that require microgravity to be made, or things to be used in space. For instance, satellites. It would be much cheaper to build and launch them from the Moon.
We could manufacture components which require vacuum and or microgravity on lunar orbital stations.
> IMHO it's going to be much more efficient to build large quantities of solar panels on Earth and place them in Sahara desert
How are you planing to send that power to, for instance, the United States? Disregarding the massive infrastructure requirements, there are serious power losses.
> How are you planing to send that power to, for instance, the United States? Disregarding the massive infrastructure requirements, there are serious power losses.
I just got into this discussion the other day here:
A commenter estimated the losses from North Africa to the United States to be about 33% with high-voltage DC.
Wikipedia says this:
Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km, about 50% less than AC (6.5%) lines at the same voltage.
North Africa to North America is somewhere in the ballpark of 10,000 km. (1-0.035)^10 is almost exactly 70% (i.e. 30% loss). So, that actually sounds pretty reasonable.
Using microwaves to transmit power to receiving rectennas has already hit 70% efficiency. Exceeding that is very feasible.
Once there is full industrial infrastructure on the Moon and in Earth orbit, building microwave antennas and ground receiving rectennas is going to scale a lot better than building more and more 10,000 km lines. For a community in the middle of nowhere building a rectenna will be relatively inexpensive, but the benefit will be like getting their own fusion plant!
The moon and Mars have their pros and cons. The moon is closer and has a shallower gravity well. I think Mars makes a better destination, though, mostly because of the atmosphere which provides CO2 practically for free. With CO2, water, and electricity, you can make methane. (Mars might also have easier to find water, but I don't know offhand what the current consensus is on that.)
I don't know if there is any practical way of creating fuel on the moon. You could launch things from the moon without fuel just by using a big railgun or equivalent, but these things will presumably still need fuel to slow down at their destination.
Who would be the customers of such industries manufacturing stuff for Mars? Is there any significant demand (in the economic sense - not expressed opinion, but willingness to pay large amounts of money) for that?
As far as I see, none of the governments have expressed intent for large scale funding of such payloads to Mars, and there seems to be nothing so valuable on Mars that would justify investments into habitat construction just to extract some resources for commercial purposes. It's not even commercially worthwhile to mine stuff in Antarctic and the ocean floor (except for oil), and those are much cheaper to access and mine than Mars. Also, the property rights and exclusivity aren't a given; the Outer Space Treaty asserts that nations can't claim exclusive rights to any specific resources (e.g. a particular Martian ore deposit), so there's no (yet) legal certainty that an investor who builds some infrastructure would get their returns. If we look at the fictional Expanse universe, we currently don't have the equivalent of the "UN charters" granting specific corporations exclusive rights to some asteroids or resources that they had.
The current motivation for going to Mars is not a commercial opporunity, it's mostly exploration, because it's there - and as such, we're limited by the amount people (individuals as well as nations) are willing to spend on that i.e. consume for their ideals/desires, not invest with reasonable expectation of profit. And that "frivolous spending budget" isn't enough to launch whole new industries.
I don't know who the initial customers would be, but it seems implausible that if it suddenly became possible to ship stuff to Mars no one would do it. If nothing else, get some automated methane production going so the ships can come back.
Questionable legal status notwithstanding, it's hard to imagine anyone creating a facility on Mars and someone else coming along later and saying "you don't own that land". Then the question comes down to how much area around a facility can you plausibly claim for your exclusive use. Short of any formal legal agreements, it's basically whatever you can get away with without someone else calling your bluff and building in your exclusive area. I suppose we're more likely to see a Mars real estate land grab if multiple parties (governments, probably) are perceived to be in a race to get the best locations / mineral deposits / whatever. I could see a U.S. / China space race, for instance.
That sort of scenario imagines the money spigot going from a trickle to full blast all of a sudden. Which seems kind of wasteful compared to slow and steady funding starting much earlier, but if no one's opening their wallets yet then there's not much that the people who would otherwise be building this stuff to do about it.
It seems like you're unironically saying "isn't enough to launch whole new industries" in the same moment that SpaceX is averaging about a launch every week or two (one tomorrow, another 07APR) with a backlog of customers? You could add a layer of abstraction and it would be approximately the same thing people were saying about private launch companies in the 90s.
SpaceX’s backlog of customers has nothing to do with Mars. What makes you think a customer who, for example, wants to put a few cubesats into earth orbit has any interest in Mars?
This backlog of customers are the ones that unimaginative naysayers were talking about in the 90s when they said there would be no commercial interest in a private launch industry. Just because you can't see a commercial opportunity in getting things to Mars doesn't mean those opportunities don't or won't exist.
I’m not sure exactly what I expected to find in the holdings list, but there are some surprises to me in there. John Deere and Netflix would be two of them. However, I am a total ETF neophyte. Does anyone have any insights as to why companies like this would fit this category?
Most interesting think about this ETF is that it has possible positive exposure to an eventual SpaceX IPO.
When SpaceX does go IPO, I'm sure Ms. Wood will be first in line to pick up some to roll into this ETF - so I think of this like a SPAC more than as a pure ETF.
Does anyone know how those get worked into a mutual funds value? I actually have one of those Fidelity SpaceX funds in my 401k but I don’t understand how it works.
I expected a fund focusing on innovative stocks but instead it looks like a lot of old school beasts that everyone would like to die such as boeing, thales or lockheed...
Their holdings are interesting. For specific companies, they're definitely weighted more heavily towards "OldSpace"
Most of the non-space companies they have have pretty clear connections as suppliers (Xilinx, Nvidia, TSM). However some seem like a stretch unless I'm missing something. Maybe John Deere is planning on creating their own GNSS constellation and adding Netflix support to their tractors? I also can't imagine that space is a large part of Autodesk's customer base
I don't really get alot of these companies for that ETF,
I would pick:
Virgin Galatic - space tourism, long range terrestrial flights.
SpaceX - (Private) but a good pick for who takes the vanguard of space exploration.
Boeing - maker of one of the next gen rockets.
Planet Labs - (Private) satellite company making micro satellites.
Lockheed Martin - Lots of exposure to space, rockets, unmanned drones etc.
A lot of SpaceX fans would disagree with having Boeing and Lockheed on the list because they see them as old space, locked into the failing model of bloated cost plus contracts for wasteful expendable rockets that’s now doomed.
I’m a SpaceX fan too, but if SpaceX cut costs to orbit by 10x or 100x someone is going to need to manufacture all the huge, powerful satellites, space stations, Mars habitats, probes and resource utilisation gear SpaceX will be launching. That’s Boeing and Lockheed, they have a crapton of experience making commercial and scientific space hardware. They’ll make a fortune.
Regardless of your thoughts on ARK, Cathie Wood, and ETF's in general.
This fund is particularly interesting, because it might be one of the only chances for non-institutions and non-accredited investors to get early exposure to an entirely new avenue of resource gathering. Non-planetary mining, etc. Very exciting!
The line of thought is that ARK will get a chance to purchase IPO shares of say SpaceX for the ARKX fund at a price that your average investor won't have available to them.
Either these are some very forward looking plays, or there weren't enough public securities to fill a diversified, thematic basket.
https://ark-funds.com/wp-content/fundsiteliterature/holdings...