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
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