Many epitaphs are being written today, and perhaps even a few pitches for book deals, bringing back memories of my comments to Bethany McLean for her Vanity Fair article two years ago. However, some apparently think the LightSquared saga has a few more chapters to be written, after Chairman Genachowski’s comments yesterday that “he expects LightSquared Inc. to eventually win approval for using its airwaves”. Since I actually asked him the question that prompted this statement (at the Jefferies conference) about what lessons he took from the LightSquared debacle (a characterization he disputed), I thought it would be useful to set the comment in context.
It was prefaced by the statement that Genachowski believed all satellite and broadcast spectrum was underused and should be reallocated for flexible terrestrial mobile broadband use, to meet the “obvious” spectrum crisis, and because of this “crisis” the L-band spectrum was “too valuable to be left unused”. Of course, he didn’t state any timeframe for action, and acknowledged that it was not possible to use the L-band spectrum without new receiver standards or similar changes to protect GPS (which will take years).
Recent actions, such as tomorrow’s NPRM on Qualcomm’s plan to use Ku-band satellite spectrum for Air-To-Ground communications and the effort to allocate C-band spectrum for small cells certainly bear out Genachowski’s lack of regard for satellite services, and so its not surprising that Globalstar has been urging him in recent days to move forward with an NPRM on its TLPS plan “prior to the Chairman’s expected departure later this month”.
In contrast, observers I’ve spoken with expect his successor, Tom Wheeler, to have a keen appreciation of the challenges associated with reallocation of spectrum, by virtue of his chairmanship of the FCC’s Technological Advisory Committee (whose February 2013 white paper on harm claim thresholds notably didn’t even mention attempting to solve the LightSquared/GPS conflict). I’m also told that given the battle that will take place with the DoD over gaining access to the 1755-80MHz spectrum for an auction next year, it is highly unlikely to be worth extending this fight to cover LightSquared/GPS as well.
So why was Sound Point, which is widely believed to be backed by Charlie Ergen, buying up LightSquared’s debt and preferred shares last month? After 3 days of meetings with dozens of investors in New York this week, I’ve been refining my view of Ergen’s plan for Sprint, Clearwire, LightSquared etc and will shortly be issuing the next update to last week’s report on DISH’s wireless ambitions. On the LightSquared front, what has emerged is that Sound Point has now acquired the majority of LightSquared’s Term Loan debt, and there appears to be reasonably wide consensus that both Ergen and Carlos Slim are backing Sound Point. I’ve also concluded that the near term focus is likely to be on the leverage that gaining control of LightSquared would give Slim to get a Mexican broadcast license, as part of a settlement with the Mexican government to resolve the dispute over spectrum allocation for MEXSAT. That could provide a windfall for Slim (and DISH Mexico) that is worth far more than the $600M-$700M that Sound Point has paid for what is likely to be a controlling stake in a reorganized LightSquared.
In those circumstances, there would be little point in Sound Point offering to buy out the rest of the term loan holders, and instead a debt for equity conversion of the LP Term Loan seems much more plausible. That would leave the remaining Term Loan holders with illiquid equity in an entity with only a very long term possibility of owning valuable spectrum (assuming that any further payments to Inmarsat can be deferred indefinitely until terrestrial usage rights can be established in the L-band) and perhaps some optionality based on future litigation. That might come as a big shock to those who believe that the only outcome is that the Term Loan will get taken out at par plus accrued interest, because of how important LightSquared’s spectrum assets are to Ergen!