Doing Deals in a Pandemic

Doing Deals in a Pandemic

We’ve covered a wide range of topics recently, from an early assessment of COVID-19’s impact on the Satellite & Space sector to OneWeb’s Chapter 11 filing. We also recently published an analysis on how a pandemic-induced recession will impact the Satellite & Space venture-backed landscape (“Venture Space”).  But what about M&A, private equity/venture, and public equity activity?

It turns out, despite the severity of the crisis, Satellite & Space sector activity in Q1 2020 (“1Q20”) was actually above average across both M&A and private equity/venture capital. This good news comes with a crucial asterisk, however, as the pandemic’s impact on the economy (and financial markets) did not become apparent until the middle of March. In our 1Q2020 Quarterly Market Monitor, we counted 17 M&A transactions, 29 private equity/venture rounds, and two public equity financings

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LEO Broadband Special Report Series

Part II: LEO Systems Analysis

 

While our Part I report provided a historical retrospective on failed LEO efforts of the 1990s, our Part II report focuses squarely on the here-and-now, providing a comprehensive overview Amazon, OneWeb, SpaceX, and Telesat.

Our ~80-page report breaks down the opportunities, risks, and leading players across five major spheres.  A narrow sampling of considerations and takeaways includes:

  • Spectrum. OneWeb and Telesat are in the drivers’ seat.  Amazon is still working on a strategy.
  • Space Segment. Space segment price per bit varies widely. And despite the universal appeal of optical inter-satellite links (O-ISLs), Telesat is the only company today to baseline the technology on Gen1 satellites. Do O-ISLs have implications for a key LEO competitive advantage, latency?
  • Launch. SpaceX’s order of magnitude cost advantage and its launch cadence control gives it design freedom (both satellite and
… Read the rest

National Security Bubble, Meet the World

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) surprised industry with an interim final rule posted this past weekend. Effective more-or-less immediately, on January 6, 2020, the rule, tediously titled “Addition of Software Specially Designed To Automate the Analysis of Geospatial Imagery to the Export Control Classification Number 0Y521 Series,” appears familiar to anyone who has worked with ITAR in the space industry.

And like the laws surrounding ITAR, the rule here is knee-jerk. Also, it’s akin to closing the barn door and setting fire to the barn after the whole herd of horses ran out.

We understand that many senior officials with the DoC were uninformed of this pending rule. However, someone (or more likely, many someones), decided that software created to automatically conduct analyses of geospatial imagery (and something called point clouds) … Read the rest

Commerce’s BEA –The Gift that Keeps on Giving?

Just before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) posted a notice–a Christmas gift for the space industry?–that it is developing a Space Economy Satellite Account (SESA) in partnership with… Read the rest

The new Space Force is here! The new Space Force is here!

Sure, we’re paraphrasing one of many worthy quotes from “The Jerk.” And our response is the same as the scripted response in that movie:

“Well, we wish we could get so excited about nothing.”

To be clear, there are some good things in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), such as a pay raise for service members and paid parental leave for Federal workers. But the creation of the Space Force is the headliner, and, frankly, the only news about that topic is that there’s no real news (in the short-term).

What can we expect from the newly-established Space Force?

  • Consolidation of USAF activities, though no indication of how/when/if other services branches (Army, Navy, USMC, SMC) will fold in their space professionals.
  • We view it as highly unlikely that IC (intelligence community) space activities join the Space Force
  • No
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C-Band: Where Do We Go from Here?

Intelsat stock had its worst day on record on Wednesday, down 29% to close at $14.43. Why? Once again, it’s C-band speculation-induced volatility. The vast majority of Intelsat (and SES) investors who we speak to are laser-focused on… Read the rest

Eutelsat 5 West B Arrives DOA? Implications for Satellite Manufacturers and a Struggling Insurance Market

 

In late October 2019, Eutelsat announced that Eutelsat 5 West B experienced a potentially fatal anomaly with one of… Read the rest

Is the U.S. National Security Space “Launch Market” only big enough for two launch providers?

In October 2018, the US Air Force selected four companies (Blue Origin, Northrop, SpaceX, ULA) to compete for the newly established National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program that replaces the 1990s vintage EELV program. The Air Force has… Read the rest

Thinking about SpaceX’s Petition to Launch an Additional 30,000 Satellites

On October 15, various news outlets, including SpaceNews, reported that SpaceX submitted filings for up to an … Read the rest

The White Elephant in the hangar

 

Earlier this summer, multiple news outlets reported that Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch was for sale for $400 million. At the time, we wondered… Read the rest