u/TheDueDiligent

I've been going through Rocket Lab's filings because I wanted to separate what the company has already proven from what still needs to go right.

The existing business is getting pretty substantial.

Q1 2026 revenue was $200.3M, up 63% year over year.

GAAP gross margin improved to 38.2% from 28.8%.

Backlog increased from $1.85B at the end of 2025 to $2.22B at the end of Q1.

Electron also looks increasingly established rather than experimental at this point. Rocket Lab completed 21 Electron missions in 2025 and another six in Q1 2026. The company had reached 77 successful Electron missions by late February.

The balance sheet also gives them a lot of room. At the end of Q1 they had about $1.48B in cash and marketable securities.

The part that still makes the thesis difficult for me is Neutron.

Rocket Lab is still losing money. Q1 net loss was $45M, operating cash burn was $50.3M, and capex was another $27.1M.

R&D increased 46% year over year, with Neutron development one of the main reasons.

A lot of that runway was also created through equity issuance.

Rocket Lab raised $445.6M net through ATM sales in Q1 alone.

During 2025 it sold more than 30M shares through ATM programs and raised over $1.1B gross.

There are also about 7.3M shares underlying convertible notes.

So the company can clearly fund Neutron for quite a while, but shareholders have already paid a meaningful amount for that runway.

Then there's backlog.

$2.22B looks great, but Rocket Lab explicitly says launch and spacecraft contracts typically contain customer termination rights.

That doesn't make the backlog meaningless. It just makes me hesitant to treat the entire number like locked in future revenue.

The way I currently see RKLB is that there are really two separate questions:

1. How valuable is the business Rocket Lab has already built without giving Neutron much credit?
2. How much additional value should be assigned to Neutron before it has demonstrated a reliable launch and production cadence?

The first part looks considerably stronger after going through the filings than I expected.

The second still seems like the major variable.

If Neutron works and reaches useful cadence without another huge increase in capital requirements, Rocket Lab becomes a very different company.

If Neutron takes significantly longer or costs much more than expected, the existing business has to carry a valuation that currently assumes quite a lot of future execution.

For people who follow RKLB closely, how much of your thesis actually depends on Neutron succeeding?

Everyone talks about Palantir's contract growth, but the filings make the headline deal values a bit less straightforward.

Palantir says customer contracts commonly run one to five years, but many include termination provisions. Government customers can terminate contracts and may simply choose not to exercise future options. So when a large multi year award gets announced, the full headline value shouldn't automatically be treated like locked future revenue.

There is also some concentration underneath the growth. Palantir's top three customers represented 15% of Q1 revenue, and one customer represented 31% of accounts receivable at the end of March.

The operating performance is obviously strong enough that this isn't some fatal issue. I just think contract quality matters more when the valuation assumes years of very durable growth.

The other number I'm watching is stock comp. Q1 stock based compensation was $201.6m, shares outstanding still moved from 2.391b at year end to 2.397b in March, and Palantir terminated its $1b repurchase program in January.

So when people model the next few years, how much discount are you actually applying to announced contract value for termination rights and unexercised options?

The SOFI thesis I keep coming back to is that the bank charter gives them a cheaper funding base while Financial Services and the Technology Platform gradually make the company less dependent on personal lending.

There is some solid evidence for that. Financial Services segment net revenue increased 41% year over year to $428.5M in Q1 2026. Around 97% of deposits were insured at the end of the quarter, which also makes the deposit base look relatively resilient from a funding perspective.

Credit quality looks more mixed. Personal loan delinquency was 47 basis points in Q1, about one basis point lower than a year earlier, so there wasn't obvious deterioration there. At the same time, annualized personal loan charge-offs increased sequentially from 2.80% to 3.03%, and total net charge-offs increased by $33M year over year.

The Technology Platform also had a weaker quarter. Noninterest income there fell 27% because a large client fully transitioned off the platform. That matters because diversification away from lending is a big part of the longer term SOFI story.

Dilution is another thing I hadn't appreciated enough. SoFi issued roughly 140.5M shares through the July 2025 and December 2025 to January 2026 offerings. The July offering alone brought in about $1.7B net and strengthened regulatory capital. At March 31 there were also 281.9M shares reserved for future issuance across equity plans and convertible note conversion.

So the core question for me is how much weight to put on the improving Financial Services business versus the credit and dilution side of the story.

If the non lending segments keep growing quickly and credit stays contained, I can understand the argument for valuing SOFI differently from a traditional bank. If charge-offs continue moving higher while Technology Platform growth stays weak, that premium gets harder to justify.

For people following SOFI closely, which metric matters most to your thesis from here: charge-offs, Financial Services growth, Technology Platform recovery, or deposit growth?

I went through Energy Fuels' latest filings because the bull case seems to be shifting from "US uranium producer" toward a much broader domestic critical minerals platform.

There is real evidence behind that. White Mesa can process uranium, vanadium and rare earth products, and the company completed modifications that give it capacity for roughly 850 to 1,000 tonnes of separated NdPr per year. Energy Fuels also had about 34 tonnes of separated NdPr inventory at the end of 2025.

The commercial validation is probably the most interesting part. Energy Fuels sold 1.7 tonnes of NdPr to POSCO for testing in 2025, POSCO determined that the material met its specifications, and commercial scale permanent magnets were later produced from Energy Fuels' NdPr samples.

Financially, Q1 revenue increased to $35.8M from $16.9M a year earlier. At March 31 the company had about $956.6M of working capital, including $108.5M of cash and cash equivalents. Management said it had enough resources to execute the business plan for at least the next twelve months.

The part I'd watch closely is how much capital and feedstock are required to turn the current setup into the larger platform people are valuing.

The filings say the next phase of rare earth expansion still depends on regulatory approvals, engineering, financing and sufficient feed material. Management also said historical operating cash outflows were partly caused by low monazite volumes, which prevented the rare earth operation from reaching economies of scale.

There is also a lot happening on the financing side. After March 31, Energy Fuels issued 5.33M ATM shares for about $100.3M net. The planned VAC acquisition requires $718M in cash plus 65.853M UUUU shares, with a possible preferred share top up of as much as $135M.

On the other hand, the company has a conditional US government financing commitment for a $725M, 20 year loan supporting White Mesa expansion and a US metals and alloys facility. That financing still requires further diligence, definitive agreements and approvals.

So the part I'm trying to figure out is how much of UUUU's current thesis should still be based on uranium and how much value people are already assigning to the rare earth platform.

The Phase 1 rare earth operation looks much more tangible than I expected after going through the filings. Scaling it into the larger business still seems heavily dependent on feedstock, financing and execution.

For people who follow UUUU closely, which side of the company matters more to your thesis now: uranium or rare earths?

I've been going through Rocket Lab's filings because I wanted to separate what the company has already proven from what still needs to go right.

The existing business is getting pretty substantial.

Q1 2026 revenue was $200.3M, up 63% year over year.

GAAP gross margin improved to 38.2% from 28.8%.

Backlog increased from $1.85B at the end of 2025 to $2.22B at the end of Q1.

Electron also looks increasingly established rather than experimental at this point. Rocket Lab completed 21 Electron missions in 2025 and another six in Q1 2026. The company had reached 77 successful Electron missions by late February.

The balance sheet also gives them a lot of room. At the end of Q1 they had about $1.48B in cash and marketable securities.

The part that still makes the thesis difficult for me is Neutron.

Rocket Lab is still losing money. Q1 net loss was $45M, operating cash burn was $50.3M, and capex was another $27.1M.

R&D increased 46% year over year, with Neutron development one of the main reasons.

A lot of that runway was also created through equity issuance.

Rocket Lab raised $445.6M net through ATM sales in Q1 alone.

During 2025 it sold more than 30M shares through ATM programs and raised over $1.1B gross.

There are also about 7.3M shares underlying convertible notes.

So the company can clearly fund Neutron for quite a while, but shareholders have already paid a meaningful amount for that runway.

Then there's backlog.

$2.22B looks great, but Rocket Lab explicitly says launch and spacecraft contracts typically contain customer termination rights.

That doesn't make the backlog meaningless. It just makes me hesitant to treat the entire number like locked in future revenue.

The way I currently see RKLB is that there are really two separate questions:

1. How valuable is the business Rocket Lab has already built without giving Neutron much credit?
2. How much additional value should be assigned to Neutron before it has demonstrated a reliable launch and production cadence?

The first part looks considerably stronger after going through the filings than I expected.

The second still seems like the major variable.

If Neutron works and reaches useful cadence without another huge increase in capital requirements, Rocket Lab becomes a very different company.

If Neutron takes significantly longer or costs much more than expected, the existing business has to carry a valuation that currently assumes quite a lot of future execution.

For people who follow RKLB closely, how much of your thesis actually depends on Neutron succeeding?

I went through AST SpaceMobile's latest filings because I kept seeing the argument that the company is now basically fully funded and dilution is no longer a major issue.

There is a lot to like in the numbers.

At March 31, AST had about $3.03B in cash and cash equivalents.

It also reported around $1.2B in remaining performance obligations, and BlueBird 11 through 33 were already in advanced stages of production and assembly.

The part I found more interesting was the financing structure.

AST raised $1.075B through convertible notes earlier this year. Those notes can ultimately be settled in cash, shares, or a combination of both.

It also used its ATM again in Q1, issuing 874,045 shares for roughly $80M in proceeds.

That comes after issuing about 13.6M shares through another ATM in 2025.

There were also roughly 21.8M shares underlying convertible notes excluded from diluted EPS at the end of 2025 because they were anti dilutive at the time.

Then there are another 4.7M penny warrants related to Ligado.

So I think the question around ASTS financing is less about whether they currently have cash and more about what the eventual share count looks like if the constellation takes longer or costs more to deploy than expected.

There are also some operating details worth watching.

AST had still recognized no revenue from the core SpaceMobile service as of the latest 10Q.

Only around 8.4% of its remaining performance obligations were expected to convert to revenue during the following 12 months.

BlueBird 7 also had to be written off after being deployed into an orbit that was too low to sustain operations. AST estimated the carrying value at roughly $155M to $160M before insurance recovery.

On the positive side, the technical progress looks real. AST reported peak speeds of 98.9 Mbps from a Block 1 BlueBird to an unmodified smartphone, and the company says Block 2 satellites are designed for up to 10 times the bandwidth capacity.

My main thing to watch from here would be whether satellite production and launches translate into actual commercial service quickly enough that the current cash balance really does carry them through the heavy deployment phase.

Curious how ASTS holders are thinking about the eventual diluted share count.

I’m building ThesisCheck, a research tool that takes an investment thesis and checks its individual claims against company filings and other dated sources.

I’m looking for around ten experienced investors who would be interested in testing it on companies they already know well.

The most useful feedback would come from people who can spot things such as:

* important evidence the report missed
* claims that were framed incorrectly
* filing excerpts that were misunderstood
* weak or outdated sources
* dilution, governance, or funding issues that should have been surfaced
* conclusions that go further than the evidence supports

The report breaks the thesis into separate claims and marks each one as supporting, contradicting, or not found, with the underlying sources attached.

I’ll provide two full checks to start. Anyone who sends detailed feedback can receive another 8–13 checks.

You would be a good fit if you regularly read company filings, annual reports, earnings materials, or other primary sources.

Please comment or message me with:

1. How long you have researched individual companies
2. The sectors or markets you know best
3. One company you know particularly well
4. A link to any research you have published, if applicable

There is no requirement to post a review or testimonial. I’m mainly looking for thoughtful feedback from investors who are willing to point out where the research falls short.

I’m building ThesisCheck, a research tool that takes an investment thesis and checks its individual claims against company filings and other dated sources.

I’m looking for around ten experienced investors who would be interested in testing it on companies they already know well.

The most useful feedback would come from people who can spot things such as:

• important evidence the report missed
• claims that were framed incorrectly
• filing excerpts that were misunderstood
• weak or outdated sources
• dilution, governance, or funding issues that should have been surfaced
• conclusions that go further than the evidence supports

The report breaks the thesis into separate claims and marks each one as supporting, contradicting, or not found, with the underlying sources attached.

I’ll provide two full checks to start. Anyone who sends detailed feedback can receive another 8–13 checks.

You would be a good fit if you regularly read company filings, annual reports, earnings materials, or other primary sources.

Please comment or message me with:

1. How long you have researched individual companies
2. The sectors or markets you know best
3. One company you know particularly well
4. A link to any research you have published, if applicable

There is no requirement to post a review or testimonial. I’m mainly looking for thoughtful feedback from investors who are willing to point out where the research falls short.