Why Iridium Stock Trounced the Market on Thursday

Satellite stocks were hot among investors on Thursday, and one beneficiary of this was telecom services specialist Iridium Communications (IRDM +15.32%). Following a widely read media report about a peer company potentially being acquired, Iridium’s share price zoomed more than 15% higher. That crushed the essentially flat performance of the S&P 500 index.

Star turn

Before market open, the Financial Times published an article stating that Globalstar was in discussions with Amazon about a potential acquisition. Such a deal would bolster Amazon’s current satellite internet effort, called Leo (not coincidentally, the acronym for low Earth orbit, the region of Earth’s orbit most crowded with satellites).

Citing unnamed “people familiar with the matter,” the FT wrote that the two companies have been discussing a deal for some time. There were no indications of how much this might be worth.

One complicating factor, according to the FT’s sources, is Apple, which holds a 20% stake in Globalstar. The newspaper said that Apple and Amazon were also holding talks.

Amazon is likely not Globalstar’s only suitor. Late last year, it reportedly discussed a possible acquisition with the Elon Musk-led SpaceX. At the time, according to Bloomberg, this was among discussions with other companies that had some interest in buying the company.

None of the mentioned companies has officially commented on the FT article.

AI in the void

The clear interest in Globalstar from deep-pocketed strategic investors highlights the value of satellite networks. These are rightly considered the “next frontier” not only in the telecom and defense industries, but also in the white-hot tech segment of artificial intelligence (AI). A popular topic in the tech world is the possibility of building AI-capable data centers in space.

That said, the sudden surge of investor interest in satellite stocks in the wake of the report feels like a frenzy. While companies like Iridium have their own merits, it’s always risky to trade on secondary takeover speculation. I’d leave Iridium and its peers alone in the coming days as that frenzy cools down.

Eric Volkman has positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and Apple and is short shares of Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.