By Gianluca Lo Nostro
(Reuters) -South Korea’s Hanwha Systems is offering to sell its entire 5.4% stake in Eutelsat for about 78 million euros ($85 million), a bookrunner filing showed on Wednesday, as the satellite operator moves ahead with its new financing plan.
Eutelsat has garnered unprecedented attention this year from governments looking for home-grown alternatives to SpaceX’s Starlink for satellite internet connectivity.
The Franco-British company is seeking billions in new funding to finance the second generation of its low Earth orbit (LEO) OneWeb satellites and to fulfil commitments to the European Union’s IRIS² project.
Finance chief Christophe Caudrelier said in May that Eutelsat was looking for capital investors.
Hanwha’s shares are being offered at 3.00 euros ($3.42) apiece, representing a 13.9% discount to Eutelsat’s closing price of 3.48 euros on Wednesday, a term sheet from bookrunner Citi showed.
It also marks a steep 74% loss on Hanwha’s initial $300 million investment made in OneWeb in 2021, as the stake is now valued at just $85 million. The trade is set to be concluded on Thursday.
A representative for Hanwha resigned from Eutelsat’s board in April, signalling the Korean company’s diminishing involvement with the satellite operator.
Eutelsat is reshuffling its upper echelons. In a surprise move last month, it appointed Jean-François Fallacher as its new CEO and it is also looking for a new chairperson after the current one announced his departure along with four other board members in February.
Hanwha became a shareholder in OneWeb before it merged with Eutelsat in 2023, joining India’s Bharti and Japan’s SoftBank as OneWeb’s anchor investors at the time.
It is also one of OneWeb’s distributors in South Korea as part of an agreement signed in 2023 with the aim of securing LEO communications for the Korean government and providing internet access to underserved areas.
Last week, South Korea’s Science Ministry granted licenses to Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb to operate in the country, with services expected to be launched soon.
($1 = 0.8764 euros)
(Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)
