SpaceX Gets All the Attention, but These 3 Under-the-Radar Defense Stocks Have Stronger Fundamentals In many ways, Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX) is a company without peer.
SpaceX has the world’s best rockets and the only reusable ones (Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy) that have been consistently proven to be able to fly and return to fly time and time again. (For the time being, at least
Blue Origin, keeps trying!) SpaceX is building the world’s biggest rocket ever, the Starship, making more and more progress with each test flight, en route to ultimately turning the vessel into a lunar lander — and then a Mars lander, too. It’s got the world’s biggest satellite internet system, Starlink, may soon have the biggest satellite direct-to-cellphone system as well, and recently conducted the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history. It makes perfect sense that SpaceX is getting all the attention from the aerospace and defense press these days — but that doesn’t mean SpaceX stock is the best place to put your money.
In fact, it doesn’t take much more than a simple stock screener to find a good handful of defense stocks with stronger fundamentals: Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), Huntington Ingalls (NYSE: HII), and Leidos (NYSE: LDOS). Lockheed Martin Starting from the top with the biggest pure-play defense contractor in the world, Lockheed Martin boasts $4.8 billion in annual profit and an even more powerful free-cash-flow (FCF) score — $5.7 billion during the past year. Both numbers outclass SpaceX, which is unprofitable ($8.7 billion in net losses last year) and burning cash — $19.8 billion in negative FCF, twice as much as the net loss.