Iridium is sold to private equity firm for $591 million
By Ben Robinson on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 1:18 PM PST In Financial/Corporate News, Infrastructure, Services
Iridium Holdings LLC, which you may know as a Sat Phone company, is being bought by private equity firm Greenhill & Co. for $591 million. Iridium has said that the deal allows it to be debt-free, and also puts it in a good position to replace it’s 66 satellites.
Iridium was around in a different guise 10 years ago and launched a Sat phone service – the idea being you could call from literally anywhere. However, it didn’t get the subs that it was supposed to (it has 300K now) and Iridium LLC went bankrupt in 1999 with around 55K subs, and debts of $4.4 billion.
Next, a company called Iridium Satellite LLC bought the assets for $25 million, which a fraction of the $5 billion it cost Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and others to develop it. This launched in 2001, and gives the aforementoned 300K subscribers their service.
[Via: Cellular News]
