Bezos sells another $1 billion in Amazon stock to fund Blue Origin
Capitalism in space: Repeating a stock sale he did in May, Jeff Bezos this week sold another million shares of his Amazon stock to raise another $1.1 billion in cash to finance his Blue Origin rocket company.
The stock sale reduced his holdings in Amazon by 1.3% to 16.4% total.
With this much cash available, Bezos has the luxury of developing and building his business with no help from the government and completely free to do whatever he wants. This freedom puts him in a very enviable position.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: Repeating a stock sale he did in May, Jeff Bezos this week sold another million shares of his Amazon stock to raise another $1.1 billion in cash to finance his Blue Origin rocket company.
The stock sale reduced his holdings in Amazon by 1.3% to 16.4% total.
With this much cash available, Bezos has the luxury of developing and building his business with no help from the government and completely free to do whatever he wants. This freedom puts him in a very enviable position.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
related to Amazon itself-
Last week of October Amazon acquired wholesale pharmacy licenses in 12 States, and signaled they would pursue a partnership or an outright acquisition of a pharmacy benefit manager.
In case anyone else here confuses as easily as I do,
> The stock sale reduced his holdings in Amazon by 1.3% to 16.4% total.
does not mean that he reduced his holding from a 17.7% share of the company to 16.4%, since that doesn’t come any near matching his overall net worth or Amazon’s capitalization. The original article’s wording, “The sale represented 1.3 percent of his holding and leaves Bezos with a 16.4 percent stake in the retailer.” makes it clearer (that he reduced his holding from about 16.6% to 16.4%) by putting more distance between the two “percents” which refer to different things.
At that rate Bezos could operate without a profit for over 100 years. Is that good for Blue Origins or not? It certainly affects how he builds his company.
That’s an excellent point Ken Anthony. I’ve wondered myself if Blue Origin is truly being built to compete. SpaceX had to hit the ground running and emerged from the crucible of free enterprise and competition as a serious competitor.
This harkens back to Mr. Zimmerman‘s argument that the Commercial Reupply Contracts should be carefully throttled to keep the companies competing as efficient and lean as possible. I think if you’re an engineer at Blue Origin it would be hard to resist thinking that more money can be thrown at problems.
I hope they can start to generate profit in the near future. Until then it’s just an expensive hobby for Mr. Bezos.
Regarding the above comments….. seeing how Mr Bezos has run Amazon at a minute profit level, yet is now the worlds richest man ( so my 11 year old son told me today.. not fact checked….) I would not bet against him having a pretty good “long game” for his rocket business…..
2 billionaires competing in the space game…. I love it! Finally we are living in the future!!
My main concern is not Bezos’ competitiveness, but his tendency to want control over the lives of others. He has definite ideas about the right way and wrong way of things and govt. enforcement is perfectly acceptable to him (with himself excepted of course.)
Musk is no saint, but much less inclined to want people regulated.