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Technology Stocks : IRID - Iridium World Communications IPO Announced! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Marty Rubin who wrote (1787)	5/17/1999 5:47:00 AM
From: Rob Prickett	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2693

Marty, other: Iridium Valuation, I'm new to this board, so I hope this is not rehashing recent discussions. Does anyone have a book value or other metric for Iridium? Right now, the market capitalization is about $205 M (10.50/share times about 19.7M shares). I don't know what the debt is. Yahoo lists the per-share Book Value at $35.40 for the most recent quarter. This seems too high, and may have some big intangibles included: biz.yahoo.com Iridium has 66 satellites and a few spares. Say it takes (at least) $30M to build, $30M to launch (on a bundled launch) each one. That's $4.2B for the space hardware alone. Add ground network support, marketing relationships, phone licenses, and the number gets a lot bigger. Marty, you state "we have at least 66 satellites running around the earth and many companies will want at least some". I doubt it will work like that. The system is designed pretty much all or none. It makes more sense for Iridium (or a buyer) to get their phone production and marketing revamped and make the thing work. I have a feeling this one will turn around, and am seriously looking at the stock. Besides, Clive Cussler always writes the Iridium system into the plot for his Dirk Pitt novels, so it has to be real :) Good Luck, Rob