Eutelsat shares jump after satellite operator rejects approach

The offer from billionaire investor Patrick Drahi had valued the French company at €12.10 per share with all dividends attached, the company confirmed on Thursday, or roughly €2.8bn.

A person with knowledge of the matter reportedly told Bloomberg the day before that Drahi had tabled his offer for the outfit, which operates satellites for government agencies as well television broadcasters, earlier in the same month.

Eutelsat said the unsolicited, preliminary and non-binding offer was rejected unanimously by the relevant governance bodies of the company.

The French company is but one of several outfits racing to put a constellation of communications satellites into low-Earth-orbit, including Elon Musk's Starlink and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's Project Kuiper.

Last April, Eutelsat picked up a roughly 24% stake in rival OneWeb for $550m which counts the UK government and Bharti Global among its shareholders.

OneWeb's satellite constellation had already been largely deployed and was expected to reach global coverage in 2022.

Eutelsat claimed at the time that: "OneWeb will be the first complete nongeostationary constellation with truly global coverage, significantly ahead of competing projects.

"It will deliver 1.1 Tbps of capacity addressing the government, fixed data and mobility markets. Plans include a second-generation constellation that will provide significant enhancements in terms of capacity, flexibility and economics."

As of 1026 BST, shares of Eutelsat were trading up by 13.82% to €11.78.