LONDON-ICO Global Communications Ltd. announced last week that it filed registration statements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of $100 million worth of ordinary shares and $50 million of high-yield senior notes.
ICO is a spinoff of Inmarsat, established in 1995, to provide global mobile personal communications services via a medium-earth-satellite system of 10 satellites, expected to begin service in 2000.
To date, it has raised more than $2 billion in equity contributions and has 93 investors. Total system cost is estimated at $2.6 billion.
The company will compete with fellow satellite communications operators Iridium L.L.C. and Globalstar L.P., both of which already conducted IPOs and have watched their stock rise since. Iridium recently completed launching its 66 satellites into orbit and plans to offer service in September. Globalstar has eight of its planned 48 satellites launched and hopes to complete the constellation and offer service by next year.
ICO’s IPO is lead managed by Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp. and its affiliates. Other joint lead managers are Credit Suisse First Boston and Salomon Smith Barney. The company also applied to list the ordinary shares on the Nasdaq National Markey.
The debt offering will be made by DLJ, Goldman Sachs & Co., Bear Stearns & Co. and CIBC Oppenheimer.
