Firefly Leans Into Its Defense Ambitions With $855m Scitec Acquisition

In Brief

Firefly Aerospace connected Sunday said it had agreed to bargain defense analytics patient SciTec for astir $855 cardinal successful rate and stock, paving nan way to its extremity of becoming a important subordinate successful nan nationalist information market.

Firefly will salary astir $300 cardinal successful rate and $555 cardinal successful caller shares, and nan woody is expected to adjacent by nan extremity of 2025.

Princeton-based SciTec sells missile-warning and search systems, abstraction domain consciousness tools, and analytics to defense and intelligence customers. Earlier this year, Space Force awarded nan institution a $259 cardinal statement to create a crushed strategy for missile-detection satellites. The institution reported yearly gross of $164 cardinal arsenic of nan extremity of June.

The acquisition comes astir 2 months aft Firefly’s IPO, which weighted it astatine astir $10 billion. The woody is portion of nan company’s efforts to reposition itself arsenic a vertically integrated defense contractor from being a launch-and-spacecraft manufacturer.

Bringing SciTec in-house will nary uncertainty beryllium helpful, particularly arsenic nan Pentagon seeks much commercialized partners for rocket search and early-warning systems, including for its “Golden Dome” missile-defense program.

Once nan woody closes, SciTec will run arsenic a subsidiary of Firefly, and will beryllium led by its existent CEO, Jim Lisowski.  

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