Hughes now is majority owned by private equity firm Apollo, has hired Barclays Capital to advise on a sale of the company, Reuters reports.
Broadband satellite services company Hughes, in which Apollo has a 57 percent stake, has received a first round of bids and drawn interest mostly from other private equity firms and several satellite firms. A second round of bids is expected for early February.
If past history applies, Hughes would face the most internal change if another satellite company acquired it, and less if another private equity firm won the bidding. The reason is simply that there has been remarkable consistency and stability at Hughes as the DirecTV business was spun off and the company has gone private.
Broadband satellite services company Hughes, in which Apollo has a 57 percent stake, has received a first round of bids and drawn interest mostly from other private equity firms and several satellite firms. A second round of bids is expected for early February.
If past history applies, Hughes would face the most internal change if another satellite company acquired it, and less if another private equity firm won the bidding. The reason is simply that there has been remarkable consistency and stability at Hughes as the DirecTV business was spun off and the company has gone private.
In addition to those changes, the company, which historically had been focused exclusively on enterprise networks, now finds its growth lead by consumer broadband services. That is a huge change.
Reporting its third quarter 2010 results, the compancy noted that "We continue to deliver strong performance in the consumer business; our largest and fastest growing business group, which generated record revenues of $122.2 million in the third quarter of 2010, 15.1 million or 14 percent above the same quarter of last year." The company recently received a $59 million grant under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to subsidize broadband services for rural and isolated households.
The North American enterprise business had revenues of $68.4 million, an increase of 1.3 million or two percent above the third quarter of 2009. The international broadband segments revenue of 51.8 million were $4.3 million or nine percent above the third quarter of 2009.
Headquartered in Germantown, Maryland, Hughes is one of the world's largest providers of broadband satellite services. Perhaps just as important, it is a company that historically has made its money in enterprise networks, and now finds its growth lead by consumer broadband.
No comments:
Post a Comment