Who Gets Bought Next in Satellite M&A. One Seller Has Already Told You
iDirect, Hughes, Iridium, Comtech. Who sells next in satellite M&A, why ground infrastructure clears at a fraction of what spectrum does, and the constraint that now kills more deals than antitrust ever has.
Who Gets Bought Next in Satellite M&A. One Seller Has Already Told You.
Rocket Lab is paying roughly sixteen times earnings for Iridium. Gilat is paying roughly nine for Comtech's ground business. Same industry, six weeks apart. That gap is the sorting mechanism, and it says exactly which assets change hands next.
~16.5×
Iridium enterprise value to 2026 operational EBITDA guidance, at the announced deal price (29 Jun 2026)
~9.4×
Comtech Satellite and Space price to trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA, at the announced deal price (15 Jun 2026)
80%
Share of iDirect's carrying value written off by ST Engineering in a single impairment (12 Nov 2025)
$1.5B
Hughes note that matured 1 Aug 2026 against $102M of cash. Chapter 11 petitions filed the next day.
Three satellite businesses changed hands or went to court this summer. Rocket Lab agreed to buy Iridium. Gilat agreed to buy most of Comtech's Satellite and Space Communications segment. Hughes Network Systems, the satellite operating business inside EchoStar, filed for Chapter 11 on 2 August. Covered as a group, they read as one story about consolidation. Priced as a group, they are two entirely different stories, and the distance between them is the most useful number in the sector right now.
Rocket Lab's offer values Iridium at roughly $8.0 billion in enterprise value against 2026 operational EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) guidance of $480 million to $490 million. Call it sixteen and a half times. Gilat is paying $157.5 million in cash for a Comtech unit that produced $195.2 million of revenue and $16.8 million of adjusted EBITDA in the twelve months to 31 January 2026. Call it nine and a half. Both are satellite communications businesses. Both were priced by sophisticated buyers inside six weeks. One cleared at nearly double the other.
Who is the most likely next satellite company to be sold?
ST Engineering iDirect. It is the only sizable asset in commercial satcom with a confirmed seller, a published reserve price and no announced buyer. In November 2025, ST Engineering wrote iDirect's carrying value down from S$837 million to a value-in-use of S$170 million, roughly $133 million at current exchange rates, and told the market it was in active discussions on strategic options including divestment. Nine months later there is still no signed agreement, and the disclosure language has not changed.
Every other name on the industry's who-is-next lists is inference. iDirect is a live process with a number attached to it, disclosed by the seller, in a public filing.
That is the near-term answer. The larger transaction nobody is pricing properly sits at Viasat, where an activist-driven Strategic Review Committee has spent since May 2026 weighing whether to separate the government business from the commercial one. A separation is being debated as a value-unlock question. It is also, mechanically, how you turn one company that is difficult to buy into two companies that are not.
The rest of this piece works through what each of those prices actually bought, why the ground segment is clearing at single digits while spectrum clears at sixteen, what a bankruptcy court rather than a banker will do to Hughes, and which assets sit next in line. It closes on the constraint that now kills more satellite deals than antitrust ever has, which is not competition policy at all.
The remaining eight sections are for subscribers.
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- 02What Rocket Lab actually bought
- 03What the ground segment is worth
- 04The forced seller
- 05Who gets bought next, ranked
- 06The Viasat wildcard
- 07What kills deals now
- 08What to watch
- 09Method and sourcing
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