Lockheed Martin is free to find buyers for the Jabiru-1 satellite it was building for Australia’s NewSat after a US bankruptcy court dismissed their construction contract.
The court had granted NewSat’s administrator PPB Advisory measures that…
Lockheed Martin is free to find buyers for the Jabiru-1 satellite it was building for Australia’s NewSat after a US bankruptcy court dismissed their construction contract.
The court had granted NewSat’s administrator PPB Advisory measures that prevented Lockheed from cancelling the contract when it filed for Chapter 15 protection in April.
However, this was removed after PPB declared it was not certain it could close a deal that would refinance the Australian satellite operator.
NewSat had been nearing a deal that involved Malaysian satellite operator Measat, but was unable to secure it before an agreed 18 May deadline.
Although Lockheed had originally issued a termination notice in January over US$21m in overdue payments, it had continued to build the spacecraft for a launch in H2 2016 with Arianespace, which has also issued a termination notice.
NewSat has been unable to meet the Jabiru-1 commitments because it still locked out of its project financing facilities after allegedly breaching their terms last year.
The group defaulted on the debt in June 2014 after borrowing a US$10m unsecured short term loan from shareholder Ever Tycoon.
It filed for protection soon after French export credit agency COFACE, which is guaranteeing a lender group that was withholding about US$62m as of 8 April, said it was not in favour of a proposed waiver deal.
Other lenders withholding combined facilities worth about US$160m – predominantly the US Export Import Bank – had been waiting on COFACE or another funding substitute to emerge before restarting their funding.
With the Jabiru-1 construction contract now cancelled, Lockheed has retained title of its equipment until such time as the contract is able to be paid out in full.
Measat owns the Ka-band rights for where Jabiru-1 was to be placed at 91.5E, however, these expire in 2017. The Malaysian firm also hosts NewSat’s Jabiru-2 payload on the Measat-3b satellite that was launched late last year.
France’s Eutelsat and British MSS operator Inmarsat, which was recently reported to have walked away from the sale of Airbus DS’ satcoms assets, have also been marked as possible buyers.
So too have private equity firms Carlyle and Blackstone.
Neither company was able to comment on the sale speculation.
