Inmarsat Share Discussion Threads

[andrbea] 07/10/2005 14:40

With financially troubled domestic airlines reluctant to buy its service, Connexion sees the maritime market as its next big opportunity, said Laurette Koellner, Connexion's president, in an interview Tuesday.

About 40,000 merchant ships roam the oceans worldwide, and the maritime market could be as big as $5 billion, she said.



/....



Connexion will run into competition with London-based Inmarsat, the market leader in the satellite-based distress signal system in large ships, which is branching into Internet service, Kagan says.

Persuading Inmarsat customers to switch could be a challenge, Kagan says: "It's not going to be a slam dunk."

One advantage for Connexion is that it can also offer satellite TV to its customers, a service largely missing in merchant ships, Kagan says.

[pawsnjaws] 07/10/2005 10:50

Some of the new investors undoubtedly took advantage of the £2.99 we saw a glimpse of yesterday. I wish .....

[whipround] 07/10/2005 10:17

How perceptive of the journalist

[andrbea] 07/10/2005 07:33

Inmarsat, 6.75p lower at 304p, revealed that the hedge fund Lansdowne Partners had raised its stake in the company to 5.4 per cent from 4.3 per cent. Lansdowne is likely to have picked up the extra shares when the private-equity backers of the satellite operator sold down their stakes this week.

[whipround] 06/10/2005 12:03

Good work Andrbea, I'm thinking about adding at this level.

[andrbea] 06/10/2005 10:54

found this snippet about lansdowne


"Again, some hedge funds may be trading-based, and some may be quite successful at it, but this is too much of a generalisation.

Recently I travelled to London with a colleague for interviews with some of the top hedge fund managers in Europe. We also had a number of conference calls with some top US-based managers.

We spoke to managers such as Landsdowne Partners, Adelphi Capital, Odey Asset Management, Copper Arch and Kinetics, all with successful track records over long periods.

These managers have sound, well thought out philosophies to selecting shares and managing money, but also typically a very long-term investment horizon.

They are not trading orientated by nature. One manager quoted the intention of never having to sell a share once it had been bought.

This may seem a bit extreme, but it certainly portrays a very different mind-set to the popular perception.

In practice, many of these funds hold investments for a number of years. I believe that these funds have a more enduring philosophy than funds that rely on constant news flow and churn to generate profits."

[pawsnjaws] 06/10/2005 10:44

and there is your rns... Landsdowne Partners Ltd.

[andrbea] 06/10/2005 10:07

if 16% of the stock is up for sale, and the institutions buy it up, we should get rns's to see who it was who increased their holdings

[whipround] 06/10/2005 10:06

"We remain extremely excited about our business and growth prospects," said
chairman and chief executive Andrew Sukawaty in a statement.

Any co. that generates EBITA of 67% of turnover gets my money every time.

[whipround] 06/10/2005 10:00

I wouldn't put too much faith in graphs, don't really mean a thing. Reasonable timing by Apax etc as market heads south. It'll be interesting to see who has picked up shares.

[ygor705] 05/10/2005 18:34

The problem with big share sales is that they develop a momentum all of their own. Papers have to be written, market soundings taken and committees persuaded. All takes time so I would not read too much into the actual share sale coinciding with something else that's positive. Agree that the shape of the chart doesn't look too good ....... we need some more positive news and quick! The US actions against insurgents in Iraq this week should have boosted revenues though.

[little beaker] 05/10/2005 15:43

How convenient.

[andrbea] 05/10/2005 15:41

maybe because 'consolidation fever' only really started about July time.

[little beaker] 05/10/2005 15:36

Quick question: If someone wanted to come in and buy the co, why wouldn't they have done so a couple of months ago before a costly float, and at a lower price?

Chart looks terrible, by the way.

[andrbea] 05/10/2005 15:33

isat
This big share sale..
sounds part of a bigger plan to me, but what do I know?

why should anyone sell 16% of the total stock on the eve of the inmarsat 4 rollout (and 85% world coverage)

free float is 54% now..
why a big player (Eutelsat or Intelsat) could easily come in and take them over (with 51% of the stock)
or maybe that's why this is being done all along?

cf. the consolidation itch in this sector over the pond:

[whipround] 05/10/2005 12:10

Shipping giant Maersk Sealand has trialled Inmarsat's Fleet F77 128 kbps service - and is impressed with the results
04-10-2005 - Container shipping company Maersk Sealand has strongly endorsed Inmarsat's new Fleet F77 128kbps service after successfully completing an extensive maritime field evaluation.

The trials took place on Chastine Maersk - a post-panamax container vessel built in 2001, which is one of the company's fleet of 300 ships.

Torsten Svanholm, Maersk's senior superintendent engineer in IT and communications, said: "Throughout the trial we found the 128 kbps Fleet F77 service to be very reliable. The enhanced Fleet F77 service also gives us more choice.

"We can use the 64kbps service for standard communications or use the 128kbps service for more cost-effective large file transfers."

The tests were carried out by independent data and messaging specialists - Imhotek. The company developed a series of automated tests to prove the usability of various applications over all available Fleet F77 channels in order to simulate real user scenarios.

Trials took place at Inmarsat headquarters and onboard Chastine Maersk using 128kbps and 64kbps channels and evaluating a range of protocols during which file sizes of up to five megabytes were successfully transferred.

The revised version of Fleet F77 includes a dedicated 128kbps ISDN channel - doubling the 64 kbps capacity previously available.The additional bandwidth builds on F77's established benefits of voice, MPDS and fax services.

It also meets the latest requirements for the global distress and safety system (GMDSS) giving urgent voice calls priority over lower priority voice and data traffic.

The enhanced service also provides faster access to internet protocol (IP) services via ISDN dial-up networks.

[andrbea] 05/10/2005 07:17

Inmarsat was the most heavily traded mid-cap as Apax Partners, Permira and Lockheed Martin - all prefloat backers of the satellite operator that did not sell stock at June's IPO - disposed of a combined 75 million shares at 317½p, increasing the free float to 54 per cent.

[whipround] 04/10/2005 17:40

Lets hope for a better day tomorrow.

[ygor705] 04/10/2005 16:21

Yes...........loads more buys than sells and in big volume (second biggest day volume since flotation). One purchase alone was for 7 million shares and net buys on the day so far is 75 million shares. Won't take long to mop up the syndicates share holding at that rate!

[pawsnjaws] 04/10/2005 13:11

Lots of buys today.

[andrbea] 04/10/2005 10:57

sgh is up again (has its own thread)

"SatCom is a global reseller of airtime services and satellite systems hardware (mobile handsets) for major satellite systems operators, including Inmarsat, Thuraya and Iridium. SatCom's key target markets include the US, Europe, Asia and Middle East."

[martingb] 04/10/2005 07:43

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Apax Partners Worldwide LLP, Permira
Advisers Ltd. and Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Comsat Investments Inc.
are selling around 245 million pounds ($429.8 million) of shares in
Inmarsat Plc, whose satellites hook up trawlers and freighters to
the Internet.
The investors are offering 75 million Inmarsat shares, or 16.4
percent of the company, in a share sale managed by Morgan Stanley,
Merrill Lynch & Co., JPMorgan Cazenove Ltd. and Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc, according to an e-mailed statement from Morgan
Stanley.
Inmarsat first sold shares in the U.K. on June 17. It offered
150 million shares, or a third of the business, at 245 pence
($4.30) each. Apax and Permira, the buyout firms that bought
control of Inmarsat two years ago, did not sell any of their own
shares in the IPO.
The shares, which have added 36 percent since the initial
share sale, gained 3.25 pence to 327.25 pence today, giving the
company a market value of 1.49 billion pounds. Inmarsat's stock
reached a high of 358 pence on Aug. 3.
London-based Inmarsat makes most of its money from providing
sea-bound customers with phone, fax and Internet services. In
August, it said first-half profit more than doubled after the Asian
Tsunami disaster buoyed demand for emergency satellite phones and
ships sent more data. The company's $480.7 million in revenue last
year included $251 million from maritime customers.