American company Spire Global, fresh off the back of its SPAC merger in mid-August, has entered into an agreement to purchase Canada-based exactEarth. Both companies provide a space-based, Sat-AIS (Satellite Automatic Identification System) product to the maritime and analytics industries. Spire is primarily known for its aircraft tracking ADS-B and GNSS radio occultation data products, whereas exactEarth focuses on maritime vessel tracking and data.
Spire’s cash-and-shares offer valued exactEarth at US$161.2 million (CAD$204 million), of which US$103.4 million is cash. Such a valuation represents an enterprise value of about 9x the target’s revenue over the last 12 months. The deal was announced on 14 September alongside exactEarth’s results to 31 July, which showed revenue growth of 26%, to CAD$6m, in the third quarter and a small net loss.
exactEarth shareholders are expected to vote on the transaction in November, requiring at least two-thirds approval – reportedly already 60 per cent of the shareholders have agreed to support the sale.
Following the vote, the transaction will complete possibly by the end of 2021, or in Q1 2022. exactEarth will remain at its Cambridge, Ontario, location as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Spire.
Comment by Matt Wilson: There are three major commercial suppliers of Sat-AIS data. This transaction will see two of them combining, leaving the third, ORBCOMM Inc, as its only significant commercial competitor. However, as with Spire, Sat-AIS is not the primary product for ORBCOMM, which was built on a legacy store/forward and IoT business.
exactEarth holds a minority stake in Australian company Myriota, a newspace satellite IoT provider. This will provide a foot-in-the-door of the Sat-IoT business for Spire.
