Intelsat put the first commercial communications satellite in orbit in 1965, when it was a club of governments. Nearly fifty years later it was a private company in Luxembourg, carrying TV channels and data for media firms, telecom carriers and the U.S. military. It also carried a mountain of debt from years of private equity ownership. In April 2013 Intelsat went public, mainly to raise cash to pay some of it down.

From Treaty to Takeover

Intelsat began in 1964 as an intergovernmental organization to build a global satellite system, and in 1965 it launched Early Bird. For decades member countries owned it together. In 2001 it was privatized. Buyout firms then bought it, sold it and loaded it with borrowing. The bet behind the IPO was that steady long-term contracts for satellite capacity could carry that debt while the company invested in new, faster satellites.

Bankruptcy, Then a Merger

Intelsat priced its IPO at $18 a share in April 2013 and listed on the NYSE as I. Competition from fiber and new satellite networks pushed prices down, and the debt never shrank enough. In May 2020 Intelsat filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It came out in early 2022 as a private company owned by its former creditors. In July 2025 the European satellite operator SES completed its purchase of Intelsat.

Cover: Viewing the Moon, Suzuki Harunobu. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for figures gazing up at the moon (looking to orbit).