Satcom Gone Wild

 

Good move by ViaSat in intending to buy WildBlue:

ViaSat will pay $443 million cash and use $125 million of newly issued ViaSat shares to buy WildBlue. The cash flow from each company is expected to cover financing for the transaction.

Liberty Media will appoint a board member to ViaSat as part of the acquisition.

WildBlue’s other shareholders include Intelsat, Tennenbaum Capital Partners, the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

ViaSat technology helps power the WildBlue service already, and the two companies have worked together for more than a decade. ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg said the company will launch a satellite, ViaSat1, in 2011 that will allow for a major expansion in the number of customers WildBlue can serve.

WildBlue CEO David Leonard agreed in a written statement about the deal.

“With the addition of ViaSat-1 capacity to our network, we believe we can grow our subscriber base to become a top 10 broadband ISP in the U.S. and expand further domestically and internationally,” he said.

ViaSat has decent cash flow, as does WildBlue. Having more Ka-band capacity coming in to their inventory in a couple of years will work wonders for acquiring new customers.  Need detail? Check it out here.