France’s export credit agency, Coface, has had a busy half-year, and has become the mainstay of the satellite finance market. US operator Iridium, with its $1.8 billion financing of its NEXT constellation, UK operator Avanti, with its $328 million Hylas 2 financing, both used Coface-covered debt.
These deals were, for all their history, much less challenging than the process that brought emerging markets operator O3b to the launch pad. Without Iridium’s cast of government-backed customers or Avanti’s access to public equity markets, O3b had to cast about for a number of available sources of debt and equity to fund its launch of eight satellites. It boasts a business plan based upon serving remote and rural areas without access to broadband – an untried customer base.
As a result, it sports a diverse group of equity investors – a mixture of US venture capital and technology investors, emerging markets-focused funds, and...
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