Viasat notifies SEC of Inmarsat purchase EGM
April 28, 2022
By Chris Forrester
California-based Viasat, in a formal proxy filing to Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), says it will soon be calling a special meeting of stockholders to approve its planned purchase of London-based Inmarsat for $3.95 billion (€3.75bn) comprising $850 million in cash, plus 46.36 million shares of Viasat common stock.
Viasat started its acquisition process on November 8th last year when it struck its core agreement with Inmarsat. The move is approved by Viasat’s board of directors.
The proxy statement says that Viasat has arranged new cash debt-financing of $1.6 billion to help conclude the purchase.
The document reminds shareholders that Viasat has been trading for 35 years. “We are developing the ultimate global communications network to power high-quality, secure, affordable, fast connections to impact people’s lives anywhere they are—on the ground, in the air or at sea.”
Viasat says: “Inmarsat’s existing satellite fleet would provide global coverage and greater redundancy and resiliency for the combined company versus Viasat on a standalone basis. We believe that the Transaction would accelerate the expansion of our global revenue in both mobility and government, where our customers increasingly demand greater geographic coverage and redundancy, more bandwidth in high-demand locations, and, in some cases, the resilience of complementary narrowband services. In addition, the Transaction would also accelerate availability and customer choice for broadband and narrowband services, including IoT services.”
“We project that the Transaction would result in approximately $190 million in combined cost and capital expenditure synergies on an annual run-rate basis, including annual run-rate cost synergies of $80 million from achieving greater operating efficiencies, capturing inherent economies of scale, and leveraging corporate resources, as well as annual run-rate capital expenditure synergies of $110 million from combining our existing satellite fleets. Anticipated cost and capital expenditure synergies alone represent a combined after-tax net present value of approximately $1.5 billion, net of expected costs to achieve such synergies. In addition, we expect that the combined company would achieve material revenue benefits not included in the current outlook from new tiered services enabled by a global multi-layer network and the revitalization of L-band services. These would include cross selling up-tier Ka-band broadband services to Inmarsat Group’s existing customer base, as well as cross selling L-band safety and IoT services and global Ka-band services to Viasat’s existing customer base,” adds Viasat.