Key Points
Rocket Lab easily beat sales targets last night.
The rocket stock is growing nearly 50% faster than Wall Street expects this year.
Long-range Street forecasts see the rocket company growing sales 10x in 10 years.
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Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB) just reported its Q1 earnings, and the crowd went wild.
Shares of the "tiny" space company (Rocket Lab is worth $45 billion, but next to SpaceX at $1.75 trillion, that looks small) surged in premarket trading Friday after Rocket Lab crushed analyst sales targets in its Q1 earnings report. Quarterly sales surged 63.5% year over year to $200.3 million. GAAP gross profit margin set a new record at 38.2%.
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And Rocket Lab isn't finished yet.
Image source: Rocket Lab.
Dramatic growth
63.5% sales growth sounds impressive, but Rocket Lab may be just getting started. In Q1 2026, the company says it signed more launch contracts than in all of 2025. The company has added 31 Electron launches to its backlog and signed a contract for five launches of its new Neutron rocket.
Rated at 13 to 15 tons of cargo, each Neutron can carry 40 times Electron's payload to Low Earth Orbit.
Outside of space launch, Rocket Lab is expanding into new areas of business as well. In deep space, the company has a new Gauss electric thruster that can help satellites maneuver more efficiently in orbit -- and power spacecraft on interplanetary flights. Around the Earth, the company teamed up with RTX Corporation (NYSE: RTX) to win a place in the Space Force Space-Based Interceptor missile defense program.
Put it all together, and Rocket Lab felt confident enough to predict sales as high as $240 million for its second fiscal quarter, already underway. That's 66% potential revenue growth -- even faster than Q1.
10 good years for Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab stock isn't cheap. The company lost $183 million over the past 12 months and burned through more than $315 million in negative free cash flow. Even with $680 million in trailing revenue, the rocket stock's $45 billion valuation gives it a price-to-sales ratio of 67.
That's today, however. What might Rocket Lab stock look like "tomorrow?"
The most recent sales estimates from S&P Global Market Intelligence show analysts forecasting $867 million in revenue for Rocket Lab this year -- but that number might be conservative. $867 million would be "only" 44% growth, but Rocket Lab just grew 63.5% in one quarter, and is aiming for 66% the next.
Looking way out in the future, analysts think the company could grow revenue 10x in 10 years, passing $8.8 billion in sales in 2035 -- and earning nearly $7 a share that year. If Rocket Lab keeps on beating analyst forecasts the way it just did, though, come 2035, investors could be kicking themselves for not having bought Rocket Lab stock today.
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Rich Smith has positions in Rocket Lab. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends RTX and Rocket Lab. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
