Stratospheric balloon firm World View to go public in $350M SPAC deal • robotechcompany.com
World View, a startup creating stratospheric balloons for Earth commentary and tourism, is heading to the general public markets. The corporate introduced Friday that it will merge with particular objective acquisition firm (SPAC) Leo Holdings Corp. II in a deal price $350 million, because the startup seeks to construct out what it calls “the stratospheric economic system.”
The deal, which is predicted to shut within the second quarter of this yr, will present the mixed firm with as much as $121 million in gross proceeds, plus an choice to enter into extra fairness financing agreements for as much as $75 million. The $121 million determine is assuming no shareholder redemptions, nonetheless, and as we’ve seen with some house SPACs up to now – notably Virgin Orbit, which we lined earlier this week – an sudden variety of redemptions can typically drastically eat into that determine.
Tucson, Arizona-based World View says its stratospheric distant sensing balloons provide particular advantages over conventional satellites. The corporate’s distant sensing balloon programs – which it calls Stratollites – can fly at altitudes as much as 29 kilometes (95,000 toes), and World View says they may finally serve verticals from protection to agriculture.
That isn’t the one use case for the balloons, as World View sees it. In 2021, the corporate additionally introduced its intention to launch a tourism enterprise utilizing the balloons. World View says greater than 1,200 individuals have reserved their place in line for a stratospheric balloon flight; the $500 deposit types only a fraction of the $50,000 ticket value. Every journey will final between 6-8 hours.
World View has raised $48.9 million thus far, in keeping with Crunchbase, with its most up-to-date funding spherical closing in 2018. Final November, the corporate introduced a partnership with Sierra Nevada Corp. to collectively function balloons for protection intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The identical month, World View introduced a separate settlement with atmospheric monitoring firm Scepter Inc. to measure methane ranges in Texas’ Permian Basin.
SPACs have grow to be a well-liked car for personal corporations trying to enter public markets exterior the normal IPO course of, and get a big injection of money within the course of. Main house gamers together with Rocket Lab and Planet Labs have all accomplished SPAC transactions over the previous two years. Whereas some corporations – like the 2 I simply talked about – have been fairing fairly nicely on the general public markets, house SPACs generally have badly underperformed, significantly relative to legacy aerospace corporations, with a handful of corporations seeing a dire drop in inventory value.
