Iridium CEO Matt Desch spoke with ExecutiveBiz about his steps to take his firm public:
“You need to understand that our business challenge had not been growth; in fact, we had grown consistently over the six to seven years prior to my joining Iridium and had become profitable while growing quickly. There was and is a lot of demand for our service. The challenge really was the fact that we needed to replace our satellite network before it got too old, before about 2018. While we were growing fast, we were only expecting to generate a little over half the capital required, so to build the new system, we needed to first go public, and then find the remainder of the financing, which is just what we’ve achieved this month. We call this new network we’re building ‘Iridium NEXT.’ Going public was a critical first step, but obtaining the rest of the financing – $1.8 billion in total – has been a major milestone to ensure Iridium will be around a long, long time.”
