08.26.26
Iridium’s potential buyers and who’s left for Viasat?
On August 13, RocketLab filed the S-4 registration statement for the acquisition of Iridium, which just like Amazon and Globalstar a couple of weeks earlier, set out details of the process that led to the deal being struck.
In this case RocketLab and Iridium began discussions on December 1, 2025, followed by a call between the CEOs on December 15. Further meetings continued in January and February and RocketLab began due diligence in March. After the Amazon acquisition of Globalstar was announced on April 14, the next day RocketLab delivered its first offer of $42.50 in RocketLab shares. An updated offer of $52 per share ($15 in cash and $37 in RocketLab shares) was submitted on June 3 and this was updated further to $26 per share in cash and $26 in RocketLab shares on June 22, before being finalized at $54 (again 50/50 cash and shares) the next day. The dates on which RocketLab began discussions with Iridium are consistent with my assumption that RocketLab was Globalstar’s Party A that made an initial bid but pulled out of the process with Globalstar on December 4.
What is remarkable about the deal is how Iridium was able to push RocketLab’s offer up by over 25% despite there being relatively little competition for Iridium’s assets. The registration statement identifies three parties A, B and C as potential rival bidders, but the only one of these that made a serious offer was Party A, which had initially began meeting with Iridium in November 2025 and conducted due diligence in parallel with RocketLab, before submitting an initial all cash offer of $41 to $45 per share on June 2, which it refused to raise further.
After the Amazon-Globalstar announcement, Iridium’s advisors at Evercore reached out to 10 other potential strategic counterparties of which 4 signed confidentiality agreements but only one (Party B) entered into formal due diligence on May 13 and terminated this two weeks later without making an offer. The only other identified party (Party C), which had not been the subject of Evercore’s outreach, had their CEO reach out to Iridium’s CEO on May 7, but on May 12 said it would not be submitting a proposal to acquire Iridium.
Iridium and Evercore clearly knew at Satellite 2026 about rumors that the Globalstar deal was coming and appear to have cleverly extended the process so that this announcement would inevitably lead to speculation about an Iridium sale and drive up the share price. They also played off the certainty of the cash offer from Party A (without telling RocketLab how low this was) to get a much higher share of cash (“value certainty”) in the RocketLab offer.
So who are Party A, B and C? Party A appears to have been a private equity firm, given the lengthy and detailed due diligence and the emphasis on an all cash offer (including cash settlement of Iridium’s employee equity incentives), as well as the refusal to improve the offer based on Party A’s belief “that Iridium Common Stock was trading at elevated levels amid market speculation about a potential strategic transaction” (i.e. Party A was not a “strategic” bidder).
Party B was indicated to “require a strategic partner with which to pursue an acquisition of Iridium” which makes it clear that Party B wasn’t Amazon as some might have assumed. The most plausible “strategic counterparty” in this category is AST SpaceMobile, which would have needed backing from one or more telcos in order to make a viable bid for Iridium.
And Party C is most likely Viasat, which wouldn’t have been in a position to make a bid (and for this reason, as indicated in the registration statement, would probably not have been a “strategic counterparty” that Evercore engaged with), but would have wanted to understand more about what was happening with this key competitor.
So what does this tell us? Firstly, that neither Amazon nor SpaceX were interested in bidding for Iridium. And secondly, that AST isn’t well positioned to make a large cash bid for spectrum (either from Grain or Viasat) without backing from a telco partner. That suggests that the current frantic speculation about a potential bidding war between these companies for Viasat’s spectrum may be misplaced.
Viasat’s L-band spectrum is certainly more attractive than Iridium’s more limited amount of spectrum for companies (unlike RocketLab) that are focused on a broadband D2D deployment. But one might conclude that SpaceX and Amazon want to focus on building their satellite networks rather than paying billions for more spectrum in the immediate future. And then they can see whether or not Equatys is able to move forward to deploy its own LEO D2D constellation.
However, many spectrum speculators would now be deeply disappointed if Viasat actually does commit large sums of money to building a LEO D2D network and tries to compete head-on with SpaceX, Amazon and AST.
