{"id":18366,"date":"2018-09-13T22:30:29","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T14:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/financial-analyst-sees-jeff-bezos-investment-as-an-emerging-force-in-space-to-amazons-benefit\/"},"modified":"2018-09-13T22:30:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T14:30:29","slug":"financial-analyst-sees-jeff-bezos-investment-as-an-emerging-force-in-space-to-amazons-benefit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/financial-analyst-sees-jeff-bezos-investment-as-an-emerging-force-in-space-to-amazons-benefit\/","title":{"rendered":"Financial analyst sees Jeff Bezos\u2019 investment as an \u2019emerging force\u2019 in space, to Amazon\u2019s benefit"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_447332\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-447332\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-447332\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/170405-blue-chat-630x461.jpg\" alt=\"Jeff Bezos\" width=\"630\" height=\"461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/170405-blue-chat-630x461.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/170405-blue-chat-768x562.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/170405-blue-chat.jpg 1147w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-447332\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, shows off a mockup of the New Shepard suborbital space capsule during a 2017 conference in Colorado. (GeekWire Photo \/ Kevin Lisota)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The news of the day is all about Amazon founder Jeff Bezos\u2019 philanthropic efforts, but on the business side of things, an influential financial analyst argues that the world\u2019s richest man is an \u201cemerging force\u201d with the financial muscle to advance the global space industry&nbsp;\u2014 and Amazon as well.<\/p>\n<p>In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas and his colleagues say Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin venture, as well as Amazon, should be included along with Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX and more than 100 other firms as key participants in a commercial space race.<\/p>\n<p>Jonas writes that investors may want to pay far more attention to Bezos\u2019 space efforts, which the billionaire has said is the \u201cmost important work that I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One reason has to do with Bezos\u2019 growing fortune, which is now estimated at roughly $160 billion. Jonas notes that\u2019s \u201cequal to around 16 years\u2019 worth of NASA expenditure on space exploration.\u201d (The calculation is based on the assumption that about half of NASA\u2019s annual $20 billion budget is spent on space exploration and operations, with the rest going to aerospace, education, science and other administrative items.)<\/p>\n<p>The other reason has to do with Bezos\u2019 oft-stated passion for and commitment to space exploration. The 54-year-old has said he\u2019s been a space geek since he watched the Apollo 11 moon landing at the age of 5. In a series of GeekWire interviews, he has advocated returning humans to the moon, \u201cthis time to stay,\u201d and he lightheartedly owned up to the claim that he founded Amazon to make enough money for his space ambitions.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Jeff Bezos lays out a plan for settling the moon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YDcYdR0Sav8?start=23&amp;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Bezos is certainly putting his money where his passion is: He says he\u2019s divesting about $1 billion of Amazon stock annually to support Blue Origin.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin is working on its New Shepard suborbital launch system, which could start flying people to space and back early next year; its New Glenn orbital launch system, which could be launching satellites by the early 2020s; its Blue Moon lander, which could be delivering cargo to the lunar surface by the mid-2020s; and heaven knows what else for the years beyond.<\/p>\n<p>Bezos has arranged for privately held Blue Origin\u2019s finances to be separate from publicly traded Amazon\u2019s, but Jonas argues that even Amazon is in line to profit from space-related efforts: Here\u2019s how Jonas put it in the note to investors:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWe estimate that the $350 billion global space industry will grow into a $1.1+ trillion global space economy by 2040.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmazon is the global e-commerce leader with operations in developed and developing countries. At a high level, increased global internet connectivity is likely to lead to rising e-commerce adoption, which will move more consumer dollars into Amazon\u2019s ecosystem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur U.S. internet team identified Amazon as one of the Morgan Stanley \u2018Space 20\u2019 publicly traded stocks that are best positioned to benefit from TAM [total addressable market] expansion, cost reduction or multiple expansion from advancements in the space economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The reference to increased internet connectivity adds weight to the importance of satellite constellations such as SpaceX\u2019s proposed Starlink system (pioneered at its facilities in Redmond, Wash.) or similar systems that are in the works at OneWeb and Telesat. This week, Space Intel Report quoted unnamed space industry officials as expressing concerns about the financial viability of such efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services is signaling through its employment listings that it\u2019s getting more involved in space and satellite systems. Who knows? Perhaps Bezos\u2019 passion project and his day job (or should that be \u201chis Day One job\u201d?) will become more intertwined as the market matures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, shows off a mockup of the New Shepard suborbital space capsule during a 2017 conference in Colorado. (GeekWire Photo \/ Kevin Lisota) The news of the day is all about Amazon founder Jeff Bezos\u2019 philanthropic efforts, but on the business side of things, an influential [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}