SatLease Capital Explains New Financing Model Aimed at Service Providers

Via Satellite illustration

SatLease Capital (SLC) is a new company in the satellite arena introducing a financing option for smaller and mid-sized service providers faced with the capital intensive demands of the industry to access satellite hardware.

The company, based in Geneva, Switzerland, was founded in April and exited stealth mode last month, billing itself as the first independent Satellite-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering for service providers. SLC’s leasing solution allows service providers to finance satellite equipment with a fixed monthly payment schedule. The company says this gives maritime and land enterprise satellite providers a faster, less complicated market entry, which will help them build their customer base.

Mike Seery, chief commercial officer, told Via Satellite that SLC sees themselves as a catalyst for business growth, calling the relationship with satellite providers symbiotic. “They don’t have to worry about financing the hardware themselves, and they can present a bundled offering to their customer for the hardware side,” Seery said. “We’re taking care of that hardware component.”

SLC was formed by satellite telecommunications veteran and now SLC Chairman Erwan Emilian, after he left Speedcast International, where he had been executive vice president since 2017. Before that, he was CEO at IEC Telecom Group for 10 years.

“When I left Speedcast, I listed the pros and cons of the satellite provider industry for both small, mid-sized, and large companies,” Emilian said. “I’ve seen one common need, which was capital expenditure funding to help grow their business.”

Emilian advises satellite providers to avoid using their own cash to grow their business. “When you are small to mid-sized company, your financing ability is limited unless your balance sheet is great, which is not the case of 90% of the satellite [service] providers,” he said.

With the fast developments in space technology, and the proliferation of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), Emilian says that his financing tool is perfectly suited to what is needed now and in the future.

“From today to the next five years or 10 years, everybody will want to have LEO service. Some will keep the [Geostationary Orbit] GEO, but there’s going to be a lot of satellite equipment that will be changed out,” he said. “We will have a portion of the businesses which will have the financial means to afford those changes and new technologies using our leasing tool.”

SLC has completed proof of concept work with one satellite service provider in which the company procured the equipment, paid the equipment manufacturer, shipped the equipment, and invoiced a monthly recurring fee, Emilian said.

And in December, SLC announced a partnership with Blue C Mobile, a maritime satellite communications company. SLC will provide custom and flexible financing solutions for Blue C Mobile customers.

“The satellite providers no longer have to worry about where they are going to find the money to purchase the hardware, to then offset that with a lease to the customer because they think that they can’t win the business unless they do both,” Seery said. “They might have the right capability from an airtime perspective, or from an installation perspective. They might be a great local partner for that customer. But they can’t actually deliver the hardware component the way the customer wants it. So they’ll probably miss out on that business and therefore, they are not going to grow in the same way that they wanted to grow, or the way the market is growing. What we are doing is essentially acting as a growth engine by enabling them to access capital.”

Emilian said SLC will enable Tier 2 service providers to win more business. “The satellite provider companies are saying ‘You are going to save us,’” he said