Aireon has signed a credit facility agreement for US$200 million with a group of several independent investor funds, led by Deutsche Bank.
This credit facility provides Aireon with the resources to fund various company initiatives and to continue to pay Iridium for the costs related to the integration, launch and hosting of the AireonSM payload on each of the 81 Iridium® NEXT satellites.
The agreement was signed on December 21st, 2018. This announcement comes just days after the final launch of Iridium NEXT satellites and their Aireon hosted-payloads.
The eleven long-term contracts signed with its launch Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) customers have provided Aireon with a strong financial foundation. Aireon has already started paying the US$200 million hosting fee owed to Iridium, and this new credit facility has enabled the company to pay another US$35 million in 2018 for a total of US$43 million to date.