$IRDM / $RKLB: The following is a transcript of a video of Matthew J. Desch, CEO of Iridium circulated to employees of Aireon on July 6, 2026 in connection with the acquisition of Aireon by Iridium:
"Hey everyone, Matt here and I just wanted to record a message on your first day with us saying, “Welcome to Iridium.”
We're really excited you're with us. You know, a lot has happened really since the last time we talked, including news that maybe many of you might not have expected.
And that is, of course, that Iridium has agreed to be acquired by Rocket Lab.
Now Sir Peter Beck, the Founder, CEO of Rocket Lab, has been pretty public about the why they wanted to acquire us. And that is, you know, they want to move into applications and be one of the only true end-to-end space companies.
And that's a pretty exciting vision that they've been talking about for quite a while. And in fact, looking for a way to do that.
They see Iridium as a way to jumpstart that effort and utilize really Iridium as a platform for future growth and success.
Now you might ask, “what was our why?”
And I think, I think I've been pretty clear about it, that I believe with the increasingly competitive environment, and the difficulties really of being successful in space generally, is that the winners of the future are going to be vertically integrated, being able to bring launch, satellites, and services, or applications as they call them, all to space at once. And you know if you think about it, it really having all those capabilities makes it faster to get new services into space, it allows you to experiment and deliver better services to space, and it also really makes the business case easier.
It allows you to close and be more successful in things that you otherwise might have taken longer to be able to do. You know, I was thinking a little bit about how Aireon was be able to be successful initially, and of course it was innovation, it was hard work, and it was really building a business. But in many ways, we utilized an early form of integration, you know. As a payload, you hopped us a ride into space with our Iridium NEXT constellation refresh effort and that allowed you to get into space faster at lower cost and make the business case work right off the bat.
So I can assure you that Rocket Lab is very excited about Aireon.
I actually talked to Sir Peter, last night and mentioned that we were closing.
He was quite excited about that.
He really wants to, you know, talk about the potential for how we can be even more successful in the aviation safety and services environment. And I think he agrees with me that this is really a great opportunity.
But you know, we're not together yet.
You know, we anticipate the Rocket Lab transaction to close mid-2027 and until then for Iridium, for all of us, it's really business as usual.
We got to keep delivering services to our customers, keep continuing and expand what we're doing, and keep doing it really in the way that we've been doing it now.
But this transaction, that is Iridium's acquisition of Aireon, has closed. And as of today, you are all like me, an Iridium employee.
So, you're part of Iridium, you’re completely on board and I hope you agree that's really worth celebrating.
So, you might be wondering what's next now?
Well, as I said, the honest answer is you just need to keep doing what you're doing as well or better than you've been doing it before. You know, delivering services to your customers, to the ANSPs, creating and selling data services, getting Aireon 3.0 done.
Those are all critical activities and I urge you to continue to focus on building the Aireon business into the biggest and most successful it can be.
You know nothing really about your mission really changes today."
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