Pierre-Jean Beylier, SpeedCast’s CEO. Photo: SpeedCast

[Via Satellite 11-03-2016] In October 2014, in a key personnel move, SpeedCast hired Keith Johnson as its new senior vice president and general manager for energy. Johnson had had a near 30-year career at Harris CapRock and his move to SpeedCast was a significant one. Two years after hiring Johnson, SpeedCast invested $425 million in acquiring Harris CapRock.

Pierre-Jean Beylier, SpeedCast’s CEO admitted that the company started thinking about acquiring Harris CapRock “a long time ago” and bringing Johnson on board could well have been the catalyst for one of the biggest acquisitions to hit the satellite sector this year. Straight after the deal was announced, Beylier took time to talk to Via Satellite about its significance for SpeedCast.

VIA SATELLITE: How significant an acquisition for SpeedCast is Harris CapRock? Why does this acquisition make sense for the company?

Beylier: It is by far the biggest acquisition we have done; it is a transformational deal. We are acquiring a company that is bigger than SpeedCast, which makes us the global leader in our industry. So, it is definitely something on a different scale to what we have done before. In terms of industry logic, it is an amazing feat: we are more than doubling our maritime revenues, and particularly building a very strong position in the cruise business. Three months ago, we acquired WINS Limited, which has a presence in the cruise and ferry segment. We are adding a bigger cruise business to that with CapRock. The cruise business is the fastest growing within maritime, I think everyone understands the logic in the cruise business — the demand for bandwidth is growing exponentially in this sector — it is a great growth engine for us.

You also have the energy sector part with Harris CapRock. It gives us a leadership position within the sector, and at a very attractive position within the cycle. We have seen the oil and gas sector bottoming out, and now stabilizing. We are now ready for recovery and we are very well positioned to benefit from it.

The combined company has a unique global footprint, network, products and services etc. We are a very big buyer of satellite capacity and I think that scale will definitely help us be competitive in the marketplace.

Beylier: I don’t think there is an ultimate goal, there is a vision to become a major player in this industry. We have achieved that. I prefer to talk about dreams rather than visions — I find a dream much more powerful than a vision. We started this company 16 years ago and what we have achieved so far is so much bigger than our wildest dreams when we started.

When we look at where we are now — it is amazing. But we have more ambitions and dreams, and we are going to work hard on leveraging the acquisition and integrating the two companies. Once we have done this, we will think about what is next. We have an amazing opportunity with this acquisition, it is one of those where you think, “wow, this was meant to be.” It is very special.

VIA SATELLITE: How do you view the maritime business for SpeedCast? What verticals do you think offer the most potential growth for the company?

Beylier: Maritime has already been a big growth vertical for SpeedCast. In the combined company, it represents 35 percent of total revenues, slightly below energy. However, it is a very strong growth engine.

We now have a very strong position within the cruise segment so, it is just fuelling that long-term sustainable organic growth. We are very confident about sustaining long-term organic growth here. Harris CapRock will contribute further to that. It will bring some high quality customers to us.

VIA SATELLITE: Do you think SpeedCast will look to ultimately look to play in the aero market? Is this the next area the company will target?

Beylier: We do a few things in aero. There are no big plans at this stage that we can talk about. We are trying to understand that segment of that market and see whether we can play a bigger role.

VIA SATELLITE: Will SpeedCast make further acquisitions? Do you believe your buying spree will continue?

Beylier: We have been implementing our growth strategy, which combines organic growth and inorganic growth. Every company we acquire, we have probably said no to two or three others. I think this one is very special; it is a very strategic, accretive deal for our shareholders, a very exciting deal for everyone at SpeedCast.

Looking forward, we will be very focused on integrating Harris CapRock. We are working on the amazing revenue synergies that we have ahead of us. We are not ruling out making more acquisitions but, in the short term, we are focusing on integrating Harris CapRock.

VIA SATELLITE: When did you start thinking about Harris CapRock?

Beylier: We started thinking about this deal a long time ago and there was a lot more work on this deal because of its size. Keith Johnson runs the SpeedCast energy business and was a senior leader at Harris CapRock for more than 20 years before he joined us two years ago. We spent time planning our strategy and are now very happy with where we are today. By combining SpeedCast and Harris CapRock we think we will have an amazing team.

VIA SATELLITE: So, you were thinking about this acquisition two years ago?

Beylier: I have said what I have to say!