Analyst sees Jeff Bezos as "emerging force" in global space industry – GeekWire



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Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, is showing a model of the New Shepard suborbital space capsule at a conference in 2017 in Colorado. (Photo GeekWire / Kevin Lisota)

The news of the day concerns the philanthropic efforts of Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, but from a business perspective, an influential financial analyst argues that the richest man in the world is an "emergent force" capable of to advance the global space industry – and Amazon too.

In a note to investors, Adam Jonas, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, and his colleagues say Blue Origin of Bezos, along with Amazon, should be associated with Elon Musk's SpaceX and more than 100 other companies in a race. commercial space.

Jonas writes that investors might want to pay much more attention to Bezos' space efforts, which the billionaire said is "the most important job I do."

One of the reasons is related to the growth of Bezos' fortune, which is now estimated at around $ 160 billion. Jonas notes that "the equivalent of about 16 years of NASA's space exploration spending" (the calculation is based on the assumption that about half of the annual budget of 20 billion NASA dollars is spent on space exploration and operations). , education, science and other administrative elements.)

The other reason is Bezos' passion and commitment to exploring space. Aged 54, he has declared himself a space geek since he watched the Apollo 11 land at the age of 5. and he was kind enough to claim that he had founded Amazon to earn enough money for his space ambitions.

Bezos certainly puts his money at the service of his passion: he says he sells about $ 1 billion worth of Amazon titles each year to support Blue Origin.

Blue Origin is working on its New Shepard suborbital launch system, which could start transporting people into space and early next year; its New Glenn orbital launch system, which could launch satellites in the early 2020s; its LG Blue Moon, which could deliver goods to the lunar surface in the mid-2020s; and heaven knows what else for years to come.

Bezos has made sure that Blue Origin's finances are separate from those of Amazon, but Jonas argues that even Amazon is online to take advantage of the space-related efforts: here's how Jonas does it. put in the note to investors:

"We estimate that the $ 350 billion global space industry will represent a global space economy of $ 1.1 trillion by 2040.

"Amazon is the global leader in e-commerce with operations in developed and developing countries. At a high level, increasing Internet connectivity globally should lead to the increasing adoption of e-commerce, which will lead to increased consumption in Amazon's ecosystem.

"Our US Internet team has identified Amazon as one of Morgan Stanley's best-positioned" Space 20 "publicly traded securities to benefit from TAM. [total addressable market] expansion, cost reduction or multiple expansion thanks to advances in the space economy.

The reference to increased Internet connectivity reinforces the importance of satellite constellations such as the Starlink system proposed by SpaceX (developed at its Redmond, Wash. Facilities) or similar systems that are underway at OneWeb and Telesat. This week, Space Intel Report quoted anonymous space industry officials as expressing their concerns about the financial viability of these efforts.

Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services reports through its job ads that it is becoming more involved in space and satellite systems. Who knows? Maybe Bezos's passion project and his daily work (or should it be "his day 1 job"?) Will become more closely linked as the market evolves.

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