Seraphim Space Investment Trust PLC hails Nasdaq SPAC deal for

Seraphim Space Investment Trust PLC (LSE:SSIT) hailed the news that portfolio company D-Orbit SpA is to list on New York’s Nasdaq via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

D-Orbit, in which the London-listed investment trust currently owns a 9.3% fully diluted holding, said it is expected to complete a merger with Breeze Holdings Acquisition Corp in the second or third quarter of 2022.

The combined company to have an estimated enterprise value of roughly US$1.3bn and have around US$185mln in cash on the balance sheet.

Seraphim said that, with no certainty that the transaction will occur, nor the price at which its shares will trade relative to the current implied enterprise value, it does not anticipate that any change will be reflected in the company’s net asset value (NAV) as of 31 December 2021.

Based in the Italian region of Lombardy, D-Orbit is a market leader in the space logistics and orbital transportation services industry, offering ‘space tug’ services where it carries satellites from their rocket to their desired destinations and undertaking any necessary in-orbit applications.

Seraphim’s investment manager first backed D-Orbit in 2019 and the listed investment trust bought the stake at the end of last year, noting at the time that its ION satellite carrier spacecraft was “the only space logistics solution currently available that offers a flexible, cost-effective in-orbit ‘last mile’ delivery solution that guarantees satellite deployment in requested orbits and reduces customers’ time from launch to revenue generation”.

James Bruegger, chief investment officer of the trust’s investment manager, is a main board director of D-Orbit.

“We first backed D-Orbit in 2019 due to its vision for creating the in-space logistics market. Since then, it has established in-orbit ‘last mile’ delivery solutions for satellites, having now successfully delivered more than 70 payloads into orbit via its ION Satellite Carrier spacecraft – something very few other companies have matched.

“These same ION spacecraft are now also starting to form the basis of the space-based infrastructure that will be used to do everything from cleaning up orbital debris, servicing other satellites, to hosting space-based cloud computing.”

He added that while there is no certainty until the proposed transaction is completed, the deal is poised to be an important step in D-Orbit’s plans to create sustainable space logistics infrastructure.