Hong Kong-listed CMMB Vision plans to raise US$300m-500m this year to partly fund a satellite it has ordered from Boeing and another it is looking to procure soon, SatelliteFinance understands.
It is considering a mix of equity and debt, according to a…
Hong Kong-listed CMMB Vision plans to raise US$300m-500m this year to partly fund a satellite it has ordered from Boeing and another it is looking to procure soon, SatelliteFinance understands.
It is considering a mix of equity and debt, according to a source, with the rest of the funding likely to come from the US Ex-Im Bank.
CMMB declined to comment.
The group said in a regulatory filing on Monday that it had hired a “global investment bank” and a consulting firm to support business development and fundraising needs. The latter is understood to be Dubai’s Delta Partners, which will help develop the group’s strategy for deploying multimedia satellite services across China, as well as expansion into India and the rest of Asia.
CMMB announced in the filing that Boeing had started building its first next generation satellite Silkwave-1, after Papua New Guinea secured its L-band spectrum rights with the ITU.
It expects to launch the satellite in late 2017 to 105E, where it will join and later replace the ageing AsiaStar spacecraft, which has priority L-band rights at the slot between 1467 MHz and 1492 MHz. AsiaStar was recently acquired through the group’s US-based partner New York Satellite Holdings (NYBB).
Silkwave-1 will have nearly 100 times more transmission power than AsiaStar, enabling it to deliver digital audio, video and multimedia data directly to mobile devices on the ground without relying on an external antenna for reception. It will have dedicated beams for China and India, and a steerable beam for Indonesia and other Asian countries, as well as multiple spot beams.
Mulls second next generation satellite
A constellation of two satellites would be optimal to cover the geography CMMB is initially targeting, while also helping to hedge the risk of any launch delays.
Although Boeing is thought to be the frontrunner to build Silkwave-2, which would essentially be a clone of the first, China’s CGWIC is understood to also be in the negotiations.
If CGWIC does get picked, a second satellite from Boeing would likely be used to support plans to replicate the business model elsewhere.
SatelliteFinance understands that NYBB is exercising an option to buy a second satellite from Yazmi USA, a company owned by Noah Samara, the founder of defunct satellite radio network Worldspace.
Called AfriSat, the satellite would enable CMMB to adopt the same twin constellation as AsiaStar for Africa and the Middle East.
Yazmi had acquired AsiaStar during Worldspace’s bankruptcy process in 2010 for US$5.5m. AsiaStar’s subsequent sale to NYBB saw Samara take a 20% stake in the US holding firm.
