Why Rocket Lab Stock Popped on Thursday

Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB) stock spent most of Christmas week opening presents from its PR department, which posted on X about how well things went for the company in 2024 -- 16 rocket launches, a growing business providing solar power panels for spacecraft, and an accelerating cadence of rocket launches in the year's final weeks.

🚀 16 launches in 2024, a 60% YoY increase.

🚀 4 launches in the past 4 weeks (including 2 in less than 24 hours of each other).

🚀 100% mission success for the year.

More about our latest mission: https://t.co/lnmLoCBaF1 pic.twitter.com/59BkRJl3OM

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-- Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) December 21, 2024

How fast will Rocket Lab grow in 2025?

Of all these announcements, I imagine it's this last one that most excited investors in the rocket stock. And why? It's not just the growth from 10 rocket launches in 2023 to 16 in 2024 that gets me. It's that over the last four weeks, Rocket Lab launched four times.

Admittedly, rocket businesses are "lumpy." Bad weather, technical glitches, and wayward boats in the launch zone can scramble schedules, causing a dearth of launches in one month and making launches bunch up in the next. Still, if Rocket Lab launched four rockets in four weeks in November and December, it should, at least in theory, be able to sustain a launch-a-week cadence.

And if Rocket Lab can find enough customers, this implies that 2025 could see many more launches than we saw in either 2023 or 2024.

Is Rocket Lab stock a buy?

How often might Rocket Lab launch in 2025? In theory, at its present pace, it could launch 52 times.

At an average launch cost of $8.2 million, this suggests Rocket Lab's launch services division could generate $426 million in annual revenue -- more if some of these launches are of Neutron rockets costing up to $55 million a pop. And that would be incredible growth compared to the launches' $72 million in 2023 revenue.

Sure, all this is in theory, but it's still more than enough to get Rocket Lab investors excited today.

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Rich Smith has positions in Rocket Lab USA. The Motley Fool recommends Rocket Lab USA. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.