Voyager further illuminates space strategy in IPO filing
A digital rendering of Starlab. Courtesy of Starlab.
By
Ross Wilkers
The company is undertaking its initial public offering in major part to help fund Starlab, a space station it is developing under contract with NASA, with nearly all post-IPO prospects hinging on that project's success or failure.
Voyager Technologies, a defense and space systems maker, has unveiled its documents for an initial public offering as it seeks to ride a wave of continued interest in space among government agencies and investors.
Roughly 84% of Voyager’s $144.2 million in revenue for 2024 came from U.S. government work and NASA is its largest customer at 25.6% of total sales, according to the S-1 registration statement published Friday. Voyager’s federal client base also includes the Air Force, Space Force and Missile Defense Agency.
Voyager also reported a net loss of $65.3 million for 2024 compared to the $25.2 million figure for 2023, but the 2024 sales figure represented year-over-year growth of 6%. The company also reported a U.S. government revenue increase of 29% in 2024.
Denver-headquartered Voyager employs 514 people and is primarily known as the lead designer and developer of Starlab, a commercial space station being offered to replace the International Space Station ahead of ISS’ planned decommissioning in 2030.
The company first filed its draft plan for the IPO to the Securities and Exchange Commission in January, but on a confidential basis. The Friday release of Voyager’s S-1 prospectus provides no firm detail on shares being offered to the public, nor how much capital the company is aiming to fetch from the public markets.
But the now-public document does tell us that Voyager plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “VOYG.” Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Jefferies, BofA Securities, KeyBanc Capital Markets, Nomura Securities and WR Securities are working as joint bookrunners for the IPO.
S-1 filings also provide details about companies not previously known to the public beforehand, including the financials and other key items that lay out the strategy.
Especially the fact that Voyager owns 67% of Starlab Space, a joint venture the company created in 2023 to develop the space station and bring other partners onboard to help advance it.
Airbus holds a 30.5% stake in the venture and Palantir owns 1%, while Mitsubishi and MDA have stakes of 0.8% each.
In the S-1 statement, Voyager projects Starlab development costs to be in the range of $2.8 billion-to-$3.3 billion ahead of its planned 2029 launch.
Starlab is intended to be in operation for 30 years post-launch and is built to have the capability to add modules to it. One major idea is to have Starlab funded via customers paying ahead of time to use the station, which would come on top of NASA’s support for the project.
Voyager is conducting initial design work for Starlab under a Space Act Agreement with NASA, which totals $217.5 million with $70.3 million remaining to be paid.
Starlab is one of three preliminary designs NASA accepted for phase one of its procurement to replace the ISS. Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman signed similar agreements with NASA in 2021, but Northrop later withdrew and joined the Starlab team.
Axiom Space is the third major commercial partner to NASA for the effort, but working under a fixed-price contract.
For the second phase, Starlab will have to compete again for additional funding as part of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program that supports commercially owned- and -operated space stations. NASA is projecting the final solicitation for phase two to go out sometime this year.
In covering many public listings by government contractors, most of them go to great pains in telling investors that a single contract or single customer does not dictate their long-term prospects. That mostly applies to IT and professional services companies whose financial outlooks center around having some scale.
But this takeaway from Voyager's S-1 serves as a stark contrast. The company is telling its investors that the bulk of its hopes and dreams about the future rest on Starlab, which by its nature is a capital-intensive effort and for a domain that is hard.
These two risk factors spelled out in the S-1 for investors to consider speak for themselves:
“Any technology intended for use in outer space, including Starlab, may be delayed, damaged or destroyed during pre-launch operations, launch failures or during the execution of the operation, which can materially and adversely affect our operations.
“Space is a harsh and unpredictable environment where our products and service offerings are exposed to a wide and unique range of environmental risks, including, among others, coronal mass ejections, solar flares, and other extreme space weather events and potential collision with space debris or another spacecraft, which could adversely affect our technology and spacecraft performance.”
The S-1 also revealed Voyager’s acquisition of star tracker manufacturer Optical Physics Company, which closed on May 2 at an $8 million cash-and-stock price that could grow to $10.7 million if certain financial milestones are met.
Optical Physics “was a strategic acquisition for program integration,” Voyager’s filing says.
Voyager is led by its chairman and chief executive Dylan Taylor, formerly president at the real estate firm Colliers International Group. Taylor is also the founder of Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that sends groups of passengers into space via commercial vehicles.