ULA about to be sold?
According to anonymous sources cited by Eric Berger at Ars Technica today, the rocket company ULA may be sold by the end of this year.
The potential sale has not been disclosed publicly, but three sources confirmed to Ars that potential buyers have been contacted about the opportunity. These sources said a deal is expected to be closed before the end of this year and that investment firm Morgan Stanley and consulting firm Bain & Company are managing the transaction.
Berger correctly lists either Lockheed Martin or Boeing as the most likely candidates to purchase the company, simply by buying out their partner in the consortium. Both companies have strong reasons to obtain this company after the Vulcan rocket is flying. Boeing’s future building SLS is questionable, especially once Starship/Superheavy becomes operational. Lockheed Martin meanwhile has been very carefully moving into the new industry, investing heavily in the rocket startups ABL and Rocket Lab. It might want to own outright ULA, so it can better manage it.
Berger also speculates that Amazon or Blue Origin might be bidders as well. Somehow I doubt any company associated with Jeff Bezos will buy ULA, since he already has his own plaything in Blue Origin. Stranger things however have happened.
Either way, once Vulcan flies successfully it will then be a perfect time to put it up for sale, and others to buy it. The uncertainty will be reduced, and ULA will no longer be saddled with two rocket families, Delta and Atlas-5, both of which are expensive and non-competitive. Instead, it will have solid launch contracts with Amazon and the military, using Vulcan.
Such a sale will obviously also force major changes at ULA, possibly for the better. At such times the new management often uses the change as an opportunity to clean out deadwood as well as force major shifts in thinking.
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Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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According to anonymous sources cited by Eric Berger at Ars Technica today, the rocket company ULA may be sold by the end of this year.
The potential sale has not been disclosed publicly, but three sources confirmed to Ars that potential buyers have been contacted about the opportunity. These sources said a deal is expected to be closed before the end of this year and that investment firm Morgan Stanley and consulting firm Bain & Company are managing the transaction.
Berger correctly lists either Lockheed Martin or Boeing as the most likely candidates to purchase the company, simply by buying out their partner in the consortium. Both companies have strong reasons to obtain this company after the Vulcan rocket is flying. Boeing’s future building SLS is questionable, especially once Starship/Superheavy becomes operational. Lockheed Martin meanwhile has been very carefully moving into the new industry, investing heavily in the rocket startups ABL and Rocket Lab. It might want to own outright ULA, so it can better manage it.
Berger also speculates that Amazon or Blue Origin might be bidders as well. Somehow I doubt any company associated with Jeff Bezos will buy ULA, since he already has his own plaything in Blue Origin. Stranger things however have happened.
Either way, once Vulcan flies successfully it will then be a perfect time to put it up for sale, and others to buy it. The uncertainty will be reduced, and ULA will no longer be saddled with two rocket families, Delta and Atlas-5, both of which are expensive and non-competitive. Instead, it will have solid launch contracts with Amazon and the military, using Vulcan.
Such a sale will obviously also force major changes at ULA, possibly for the better. At such times the new management often uses the change as an opportunity to clean out deadwood as well as force major shifts in thinking.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
If I were a potential buyer, I’d be thinking about purchasing before Vulcan flies. If successful, the flight will jack up the price.
It’s difficult for me to see either LockMart or Boeing forcing the kind of changes needed to make ULA really competitive with SpaceX. It’s not how they work.
I think it also needs to be recognized that Tory Bruno has done a remarkable job in this direction, given the constraints the owners have placed on him. He cut out a lot of deadwood.
And while Vulcan already is in certain ways an obsolete rocket, it will, as you say, be a lot cheaper to build and operate than Atlas V and Delta IV are. More to the point, its very impressive manifest underlines an important truth about this industry: there are a lot of important customers with a vested interest in there being an alternative to SpaceX, even if it’s substantially more expensive. New launch providers with medium and heavy rockets in development understand this: they don’t necessarily have to beat SpaceX on price. They just have to beat ULA (and be similarly reliable). And that is ULA’s problem: in 4-5 years, there likely will be at least a couple, if current trends continue.
This would be a good way for Boeing or Bezos to buy an organization that has success.
Boeing buying it out implies Lockhart wants out.
There could be some 3ed party could come along, too.
Another consideration is that ULA is losing money. SpaceX is creating too much pressure and without re-usable rockets, not even in dev, they do not see a future. One, or both, partners is looking to bail before it becomes a money pit.
One more item to consider are the launch sites that ULA leases. They have not only have the facilities in Florida, but two of the SLCs (forgot the numbers) over at Vandenberg. That would be a nice benefit.
Boeing, far from buying out LockMart’s share in ULA, is most probably the instigator of this sale. Boeing’s series of blunders in recent years has kept it in the red for the last three of those years and there is little prospect of relief in sight. Boeing, in short, needs money. ULA’s Kuiper contract makes this probably the best time there is ever likely to be to get a decent price for the operation. I would not, in fact, be overly surprised to see Boeing selling off other assets and divisions in order to salvage a subset of itself.
Lockmart would be a better home.
“Boeing, far from buying out LockMart’s share in ULA, is most probably the instigator of this sale.”
Yeah. That seems to be the sense in the industry reaction so far.
Vulcan already has vertical integration as Canaveral.
I though that the NRO was making that an issue since SpaceX doesn’t.
Eric Berger tweets this morning: “I’ve spoken with a lot of people about this in recent days, and the general consensus is that the favorites might be Lockheed or L3 Harris, followed by a Jeff Bezos company, followed by private equity. It will be some time before we know, probably.”
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1632765120286736390
I suppose that is not too surprising. I guess we’ll know soon enough.