Loral Space & Communications is pushing ahead with its plan to list part of its wholly-owned subsidiary Space Systems/Loral. The company has filed a registration statement with the SEC for an initial public offering to raise up to US$100m….
Loral Space & Communications is pushing ahead with its plan to list part of its wholly-owned subsidiary Space Systems/Loral. The company has filed a registration statement with the SEC for an initial public offering to raise up to US$100m. SatelliteFinance understands that this amount is just a place holder while the filing goes through the approval process, and that the actual number is still undetermined.
Credit Suisse and JPMorgan have been appointed joint bookrunning lead managers for the flotation. There is expected to be an overallotment option for the underwriters.
Under the filing, Loral states that it will seek to offer up to 19.9% of SS/L’s common stock. Both a guide price for the stock and the number of shares that will be issued have yet to be set and the process could take several months.
Proceeds from the offering will be used by SS/L for working capital and other general corporate purposes, including financing further growth and expansion of SS/L’s business.
SS/L recorded Q1 revenues of revenues of approximately US$230.9m compared to US$216.4m in Q1 2009. Adjusted EBITDA was up US$2.3m year-on-year to US$12.7m. The company’s order backlog as of March 31 was US$1.4bn for 19 satellites from customer including Intelsat, SES, Telesat, EchoStar, Terrestar, HNS and ViaSat. From April 1 to June 11, SS/L received three orders for new satellites, Satmex 8, Anik G1 and most recently DirecTV-14. Based on SS/L 1300 satellite platform, DirecTV-14 will use Ka band and Reverse DBS to expand the company’s HD and 3D video services.
