OneWeb satellite in assembly

OneWeb has secured further fund-raising on the anniversary of the successful bid by UK Government and Bharti Global (Bharti) to purchase OneWeb from US Chapter 11 to bring its total funding to US$2.4 billion. OneWeb has completed its transformation with the exercise of a Call Option by Bharti to invest an additional $500m into the company.

The announcement comes as OneWeb prepares for its eighth launch on 1 July, delivering highly anticipated and strategically valuable Arctic region coverage down to 50 degrees latitude.

The Call Option is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021, subject to regulatory approvals. On completion of the Call Option and with Eutelsat’s $550m investment, Bharti will hold 38.6%. The UK Government, Eutelsat and Softbank will each own 19.3%.

On completion, OneWeb will have secured $2.4 biilion of equity investment, with no issued debt.

Neil Masterson, CEO of OneWeb commented: “The completion of our funding puts OneWeb in a powerful position. We have significantly lower entry cost of any LEO. We benefit from $3.4 billion of pre-Chapter 11 investment by the original shareholders, making new OneWeb a three-times lower cost Constellation. With the forthcoming launch we will have completed 40% of our network. We are intently focused on execution and just ten more launches will enable us to deliver global coverage. Investors have backed the extraordinary efforts of the OneWeb team to deliver more of the global connectivity the World needs.”

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