Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:
ViaSat (NASDAQ: VSAT), the Carlsbad, CA-based satellite communications company raised $133 million in equity funding in December, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. ViaSat spokesman Bruce Rowe tells me the company issued about 4.3 million shares for the stock component of the company’s $568 million stock-and-cash purchase of Colorado’s WildBlue Communications, the high-speed Internet service provider. That deal was announced in October and closed Dec. 15.
In an interesting reprise of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” ViaSat named senior vice president Tom Moore to head the company’s new WildBlue subsidiary. Moore co-founded WildBlue in 1998 and served as the company’s CEO until 2005 and as a director until 2008.
ViaSat, founded in 1986, specializes in satellite-based communications and other digital communication products. The company has 2,100 employees and reported sales of $628 million in the fiscal year that ended in April. ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg has said the company’s acquisition of WildBlue, a longtime business partner, is key to helping ViaSat reduce the business risk of its planned satellite venture. ViaSat said last year it planned to build and launch its own $450 million communications satellite to provide high-speed Internet service.
