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.
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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.
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.
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.