The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 9 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Grimm: Anduril will become the sixth defense prime alongside incumbents
“I don't see it as like Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, Raytheon, et cetera. We're going to take all of them down. I don't see that at all. I think it's going to be like, we're going to become the sixth prime alongside them and that there's still plenty, plenty, pl…”
Stephens: Anduril Could Reach $100B With a Fraction of Lockheed's Revenue
“Andrew operates at higher margins, much faster growth rates. I think we could be worth Over a hundred billion dollars with a tiny fraction of Lockheed's revenue.”
Feldman: DoD procurement is built for prime contractors, not tech startups
“One of the real challenges in, for our Department of Defense is their procurement structure is designed for them to buy without trust from Lockheed Martin.”
Grimm: Lockheed Martin spent 4x more on buybacks than R&D in 2023
“Like last year alone, Lockheed Martin, the twenty-twenty-three numbers, Lockheed Martin spent six billion dollars on stock buybacks. They only spent 1.5 billion dollars on IRAD, which is called internal R&D. Their own at risk funding of research and developmen…”
Stephens: A Rebooted Defense Prime Could Be Worth Hundreds of Billions
“If you can actually be a next generation rebooted version of Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman, that company could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Defense startups must be orders of magnitude better than incumbents
“You have to actually be orders of magnitude better than the incumbents in order to win contracts legitimately, in order to really build a company in the space. It takes top-tier technologists to be able to do this, to be able to compete with the Lockheeds and …”
Grimm: Northrop Grumman stock returned over 20% annually for 15 years
“Northrop Grumman over the last 15 years has had a total compounded annual shareholder return of just over 20%. Lockheed and Boeing are just behind them at about 15%. The S&P 500 over the exact same time period has an 11.6% total compounded annual return.”
Boyle: In 2017, No Silicon Valley Startup Competed With Defense Incumbents
“There are very few companies, and particularly in 2017, when Andrew was founded, there wasn't anyone in Silicon Valley building a new defense contractor that wanted to compete with Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.”
Flomenberg: Large organizations suffer from inherent inefficiencies of scale
“There's an inherent inefficiency of scale at any company, and it's no disrespect to Lockheed Martin. Once an organization reaches a certain size, the amount of overhead and planning makes it very, very hard to move nimbly, and quite frankly, the incumbent natu…”