Amazon Heats Up The Space Race, Buying Globalstar
Inside today’s Daily Journal…
Essay: Space Is The Next Great Investment Frontier
Be energy rich to be wealthy
Tobacco market-share fluctuations
Morgan Stanley goes Bitcoin
Chart Of The Day… Bitcoin
Today’s Mailbag
Amazon (AMZN) is buying Globalstar (GSAT) today.
In time this deal will be seen as the beginning of the real “space race.” Not the battle between a failed state (USSR) and America to launch tin cans into the upper atmosphere, but a battle between private companies to convert the physical attributes of space into massive profits.
Under the terms disclosed in Globalstar’s regulatory filing, the company will merge into an Amazon subsidiary in a cash‑and‑stock transaction valued at roughly $11 billion, with each Globalstar share converting into the right to receive either $90 in cash or 0.3210 Amazon shares, subject to caps that effectively fix the consideration at $90 per Globalstar share, regardless of where Amazon’s stock trades.
This deal shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who attended our Porter & Co Annual Conference in 2024 at my farm in Maryland.
At that conference David Lashmet explained why Globalstar was his top recommendation and gave the audience the complete technical background of why Apple (AAPL) would partner with Globalstar to create a new, global communications network.
(For new subscribers who may not recognize his name, David Lashmet was the first person I hired at Stansberry Research after founding the company in 1999. He has been my top technology expert for more than 30 years. How – after all, Stansberry Research is only 27 years old? Dave was my best professor in college. He’s still running the tech practice at Stansberry Research and I heartily endorse his work. His newest idea: preventing multiple sclerosis, a major unmet medical need.)
When Dave explained Apple’s 10-year technology road map and the key role Globalstar would play in its space strategy, Globalstar’s shares were trading for less than $20. For anyone who took Dave’s advice and bought Globalstar, this deal was a home run – a 400%+ gain in less than two years.
That’s why our conference is a must-attend for all of our Partner Pass members. There are still a handful of in-person tickets available for this year’s Annual Conference in September. Attending the live event allows you to follow up in person with the experts you see featured here. And that can change your financial life.
As soon as I heard about the deal, I called Dave.
Here’s his update:
Globalstar built a network called SPOT that used L band antennas to reach space, and S band antennas to send signals down to Earth. Apple incorporated Globalstar’s SPOT into every iPhone that it’s been building for the last two years. And it’s adding these same S and L band antennas to watches.
As a part of this tech integration, Apple invested $400 million into Globalstar. Apple has been paying for its space operations, for satellite design, for launch, basically everything. So even though Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns Blue Origin (the rocket company) and Leo (the satellite company), Amazon couldn’t connect to smartphones or watches on Earth.
That’s why this is really Amazon’s deal with Apple. Amazon can now scale both its rockets and its satellite building to construct a mega-constellation in space, while connecting to phones and watches on earth.
Why did this alliance happen? Because the competition is Samsung, SpaceX, and Google. Google was an early, heavy backer of SpaceX, which just bought more bandwidth from EchoStar (SATS), for $17 billion – using Google’s cash. Google makes the Android operating system which runs every Samsung phone. And Apple and Samsung are the two innovators in smartphones and smart watches. Thus, the Amazon-Globalstar deal is really an extension of the smartphone wars into space. It’s Apple versus Samsung again – where Google is on Samsung’s side.
Looking forward, it seems clear that both companies plan to build AI servers in space, where they will have access to a limitless energy source (the sun) without having to deal with night. And, obviously, space is cold, so no cooling or water issues. Over the next decade, Amazon and Google will launch tens of thousands of satellites. This is the real space race.
Amazon is in the midst of an incredible evolution from a very low-margin services business – where it grew by stealing market share from low-margin retailers and delivery leader UPS – into the world’s top applied technology company. It’s using more robots than any other company, by a wide margin. Its cloud computing business (AWS) is the world’s leader.
The impact of this transition is clear when you look at its results over the past decade. Operating margin continues to march higher, as does it return on invested capital.
This deal suggests that these improvements are going to continue for at least the next decade as Amazon becomes, more and more, a technology infrastructure leader.
Partners, take note: Dave Lashmet’s 2024 Globalstar recommendation was not the only winner to emerge from a Porter & Co. Annual Conference. There have been many… including last year’s presentation from InvestorPlace’s Luke Lango: his Bloom Energy (BE) pick is up 300% since our September 2025 conference.
A limited number of tickets are still available (exclusively for Partners) on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Tell me what you think: good, bad, or indifferent: [email protected]
Good investing,
Porter Stansberry
Stevenson, Maryland
3 Things To Know Before We Go…
1. There is no wealth without energy. If you want a wealthy society, you have to plug it in. The chart above reveals that high-income nations like Norway, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia dominate the top of the kilowatt-hour (“kWh”) ladder while nations in energy poverty sit at the bottom of the gross domestic product (“GDP”) scale. For investors, this confirms a massive structural floor for global energy demand. As developing giants like India climb the income curve, their path to prosperity requires a massive, non-negotiable increase in electricity – meaning the world’s thirst for power is only growing.
2. A buying opportunity in our top two tobacco stocks. Shares of Imperial Tobacco (IMBBY) dropped 9% this morning after the company warned that it was losing market share to competitors. This should bode well for Imperial’s top two rivals, and current Complete Investor recommendations: Philip Morris International (PM) and British American Tobacco (BTI). Though both fell in tandem on the Imperial news, PM is up an even 100% since we recommended it, and BTI is up 50%.
3. Morgan Stanley just became the first U.S. bank to create a Bitcoin ETF. The investment bank launched the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) last week with a 0.14% sponsor fee, undercutting BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, and every other spot Bitcoin ETF provider to become the cheapest on the market. While this is noteworthy, the bigger story is that Morgan Stanley’s 17,000 financial advisors are now being trained to pitch Bitcoin exposure to their clients sitting on nearly $8 trillion in assets, representing a huge new source of potential demand.
Chart Of The Day… Bitcoin Is In An Uptrend
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has reached a series of higher highs and higher lows since reaching an 18-month low near $62,000 on February 5… trading at $75,500 at noon today, it is up 175% since we recommended it to Complete Investor subscribers.
Mailbag
“Royalty Pharma (RPRX)”
Karen R. writes:
Dear Mr. Stansberry,
Thank you for your informative column that I like reading.
Yes, dependable cash flow is what I’d look for rather than maybe making a killing or losing it all. Royalty Pharma is new to me but I’m glad you mentioned it.
Keep up your good work.
“Shannon’s Article: The Most Dangerous Lie”
Armand F. writes:
Shannon,
Absolutely fantastic article. I never read anything like it anywhere in my 94 years of existence. I am a retired schools superintendent and hold a Doctor of Education degree with six published books on education. My hobby is educational research, so I have the background to compliment you on your absolutely stunning information.
However, there is something you did miss, and my late wife of 70 years is an example. We both started out our lives as first-generation children from immigrant parents growing up in cold water flats.
When we married at age 21, we started with just $500 with neither one of us considering further education beyond high school. But my graduation present changed everything because it was the start of the Korean War and I enlisted in the Army. We got married just before I was released and I decided to use my GI benefits to further my education that led me to become a teacher. While I was pursuing my career, we were busy raising a family of four children and it required my wife to augment my teacher salary, which at the time I started was $3,800 a year.
She was interested in real estate and became a broker, and she then started a small agency. Throughout those years she never mentioned any interest in pursuing a college degree. One night at supper, when she was 36 years old, she said: “I need to talk to you.” She then said: “I want to go to college.” I certainly encouraged her to do so and asked her when she wanted to start and what she planned to major in if she knew. “I must register tonight” and off she went to a nearby college. She took to college like a duck to water and absolutely loved it to become a school psychologist and continued on to get her doctorate degree in education retiring as an assistant superintendent of schools.
What you missed was that her specialty was not just her biological role to become a mother and housewife to raise the children and run a household, but her specialty was “learning.” Women are not taught to be mothers and housewives, and they do not get any degree in doing so and that is a tragedy. They are not recognized for what they have to do and accomplish, but it seems to be an inborn trait.
Essentially, women do learn on the job. Yes, women have a different role than men, but it does not have to be different. Many of them want their own identity as a person and it only requires a change of timing. First to use their specialty for learning to raise and grow a family, and then pursue their next specialty, if they desire to do so, to have their own career and identity.
But my wife also expressed another reality. When men grow and develop in a career they choose and are recognized for it by promotions and pay increases, the wife and mother do not get any such recognition.
What then happens too often as a man gets more degrees, he no longer has someone to talk with on his new level resulting in a knowledge and recognition divide with his wife and, as a result, finds it with another female on his education or career status level. The result is a higher divorce rate under those circumstances. My wife did not want that to happen to our marriage that lasted for 70 years until she passed away.
I thought this would interest you.
P.S. We both achieved the American Dream by achieving the highest level of education and position in our career field having been first born children of immigrant parents.
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