Predict disaster (1/27/23)

Happy Friday, friends. This is Payload Edition #0311. Welcome to the 206 of you who joined the Payload family this week. Whether you’re new around these parts or you’ve been with us since Day 1, we hope you have a wonderful weekend.

In today's edition...🌧️ Floodbase raise🛰️ $NOC Q4 results💫 Payload's picks

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Cloud to Street → Floodbase

Floodbase, a Brooklyn, NY-based startup that operates an intelligence engine to help assess and insure flood risk, announced a major rebrand along with a $12M Series A. Lowercarbon Capital led the funding round, with participation from Collaborative Fund, Floating Point and Vidavo.

Who’s Floodbase? The artist formerly known as Cloud to Street is working to map the world’s flood risk. Back in June, CEO Bessie Schwarz told Payload that her company “is the authority on tracking floods globally in near-real-time, using satellites, AI, and a variety of other types of new data.”

Now, the company’s engine pulls data from a combination of historical data, satellites, and ground-based sensors to provide insights on flood risk and measure flood damage in near real-time. The company serves insurers looking to improve their parametric flood policies, which are triggered by weather events and pay out according to the intensity of those events.

The big picture: The effects of climate change are raising flags about the possibility of more destructive and widespread flooding as global water levels rise and many areas see increased precipitation.

When disaster strikes, insurers are able to use data from companies like Floodbase to offer parametric insurance policies. Using parametric insurance policies, insurers are more likely to write profitable flood insurance policies, and policyholders receive payouts more quickly after storms come by.

“This technology will enable the expansion of flood insurance to every corner of the globe, and bridge a protection gap that cannot be closed without parametric insurance,” Schwarz said in a press release.

Northrop Grumman Reports Q4 Results

On Thursday, Northrop Grumman ($NOC) capped a busy week of earnings from the A&D primes. The Falls Church, VA defense contractor reported Q4 sales of $10B, a 16% annual jump, and $2.1B in net earnings. For the full year, Northrop pulled in $36.6B in revenue.

Despite an earnings beat ($7.50 actual vs. $6.57 est.) and strong sales guidance, shares of $NOC traded down by 4.2% Thursday and saw ~$3B in market cap wiped out in 24 hours.

To levelset…Northrop Grumman has $68.3B market cap and is down ~18% year to date. The company’s space unit accounted for 33% of total 2022 sales.

Space highlights: Northrop Grumman’s space systems unit builds satellites, payloads, and other hardware. The company was the prime contractor for JWST. Space systems sales in Q4 jumped 23% to ~$3.3B, boosted by more investment in space exploration, and its full-year haul was $12.3B (+16% YoY).

Looking forward: Management raises its sales outlook for 2023, guiding to $38B–$38.4B in revenue for the year. Northrop Grumman expects space systems to generate ~$13B in 2023 revenue at a ~9.5% operating margin.

We've updated our A&D earnings story online with these latest results. Share it far and wide with your space investing group chats:

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In Other News

• The US slapped sanctions on Spacety China, a SAR provider that has allegedly provided imagery to Wagner Group mercenaries fighting in Ukraine.

• NASA has validated a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) design. RDREs could be used for human landers and interplanetary vehicles bound for deep space destinations.

• ESA, the European Commission, and Promus Ventures launched the first European space-oriented index. Euronext will maintain the index.

• SpaceX launched 56 Starlink sats, weighing in total 17.4+ metric tons, the heaviest payload ever flown on Falcon 9.

• Raytheon ($RTX) will implement a reorg in H2 2023, resulting in three segments: Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, and Raytheon.

• With Virginia Is For Launch Lovers in the rear-view mirror, Rocket Lab is gearing up for a busy year of launches.

• Lauren Sánchez will fly on New Shepard with an all-female crew of six, she told the WSJ (Sánchez is dating Jeff Bezos).

• JUICE is almost go for launch. The spacecraft is undergoing final testing before it’s shipped to French Guiana.

The View from Space