The Potential Acquisition of United Launch Alliance by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin
Will Jeff Bezos Buy America's Most Venerable Space Company?
Just because Bezos may win the bidding war doesn't mean he'll be allowed to collect his prize. Call it the great cash out. Over just nine days in February, as Bloomberg reported on Feb. 20, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos unloaded a total of 50 million shares of Amazon stock, netting $8.5 billion in proceeds -- nearly $1 billion per day of selling. Now inquiring minds want to know: What is Bezos planning to do with all the cash?
United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin: Together at last?
For the better part of a year now, rumors have swirled around the fate of United Launch Alliance, the rocket-launching joint venture formed by Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) in 2005 -- and until SpaceX entered the national security launch market in 2016, America's primary means of delivering government satellites to orbit.
- Ars Technica first broke the story back in March of 2023.
- Rumors soon sprang up about who might be bidding for ULA.
- Would Boeing -- or Lockheed -- try to buy out its partner?
- Might a second-tier space company like Northop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) try to expand its business by buying ULA?
- Or perhaps another defense giant, such as Textron (NYSE: TXT), would see buying ULA as a way to break into the space business itself?
What Blue Origin did have was a multi-multi-(multi)-billion-dollar founder in Jeff Bezos, and therefore easy access to the billions of dollars it would cost to take out ULA.
Jeff Bezos is accessing those dollars himself, in a series of transactions yielding $8.5 billion. Cash.
This article was prepared using information from open sources in accordance with the principles of Ethical Policy. The editorial team is not responsible for absolute accuracy, as it relies on data from the sources referenced.