Musk says SpaceX can hit $3.5tr in annual sales by 2033, seven years ahead of Morgan Stanley's forecast

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has rebuffed Morgan Stanley's projection that the company will reach $3.5 trillion in annual sales by 2040, saying the milestone could come seven years earlier — by 2033.

According to foreign media reports, Musk said Thursday (local time) on X, formerly Twitter, that "the best estimate for hitting roughly $3.5 trillion in revenue is around 2033."

Morgan Stanley had issued a report Wednesday (local time) maintaining an "Overweight" rating on SpaceX and setting a price target of $300 per share. That is more than double SpaceX's closing share price of $140 on Thursday.

The report followed the announcement of plans to build a launch facility in Louisiana. SpaceX said Tuesday it would construct a Starship launch site called Starbase Louisiana in the southern part of the state, with an investment of $100 billion.

Morgan Stanley said the Louisiana facility could push SpaceX's Starship launch capacity well beyond its existing projections. SpaceX currently operates three launch pads and plans to expand to 15 in total, with three of them expected to be fully operational by the end of next year.

"Conservatively assuming each pad can support two launches per day, only eight pads would be needed to achieve approximately 5,800 Starship launches per year by 2040," said Adam Jonas, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.

He added that SpaceX could still reach its 2040 targets even without bringing Starbase Louisiana to full operation. The implication is that if the total number of pads expands to 15, actual launch capacity could exceed the firm's existing forecasts — since eight pads alone would be enough to handle the projected 2040 launch volume.

Jonas said current SpaceX share prices do not fully reflect the potential for increased launch frequency given the new pad construction plans. "Investors do not fully appreciate the scale of what SpaceX is planning to do with Starship," he said.

Based on the Starship expansion, Morgan Stanley projected SpaceX's annual sales would reach $3.5 trillion by 2040 — an already bullish outlook. But Musk went further, rebuffing even that forecast as too conservative and saying the same revenue target could be achieved by 2033.

SpaceX posted annual sales of $18.67 billion last year. For Musk's projection to hold, the company would need to grow its revenue roughly 187-fold within eight years.

Jo Jae-un, an analyst at Daishin Securities, said the key question is how quickly the new investment absorbs the cash generated by Starlink's connectivity business. "Starlink's subscriber and enterprise revenue consistently serves as a profit engine, but if the company simultaneously channels funds into space launch services and a new data center project, the timeline for turning a GAAP profit could be pushed back further," he said.

He added that the groundbreaking schedule, financing details and how the data center project's profit and loss would be consolidated were the next key items to watch.