On 20 October a group of Telesat's lenders, Silver Point Capital, GoldenTree Asset Management and Sound Point Capital Management among them, put a second proposal to the Ottawa satellite operator: they would help it raise $1.7bn of new equity and borrow $1.5bn, a C$3.2bn package, against a bill falling due in six weeks. The shares dropped 10.8% that session. An earlier offer in August met the same response: acknowledged, never negotiated. Chief financial officer Donald Tremblay said the company continues to seek a negotiated resolution in good faith.

The month's slide across satellite operators has been read as the market marking down geostationary fleet economics now that low-earth-orbit capacity is flooding consumer and mobility broadband. The ledgers of the two worst performers do not carry that story. Telesat's capacity revenue is leaving through expired contracts and retired satellites rather than through discounting, and the one business where a rival constellation demonstrably took the customers is a 115,000-subscriber remnant inside a $4.6bn company.

A December bill, and no new revenue until 2028

Telesat sells geostationary capacity to direct-to-home broadcasters, carriers and governments, and that book is in run-off. June-quarter revenue was C$79.5m, down 25% year on year, the fourth straight quarter down between 25% and 27%. Full-year 2025 revenue of C$417.6m compares with C$704.2m in 2023. The geostationary segment alone fell 26% on direct-to-home non-renewals and weaker fixed enterprise demand, with chief executive Dan Goldberg flagging satellite retirements as a headwind through the rest of 2026.

Against that, roughly US$1.71bn comes due on 6 December, a $1.32bn term loan and a $387m note, with a further US$438m in 2027. Consensus has revenue falling again to C$321m in 2026 and C$277.8m in 2027 before Lightspeed, the planned low-orbit constellation, begins contributing C$541.9m in 2028. The maturity lands at the bottom.

The constellation itself is the part going right. Lightspeed backlog has reached $5.6bn, helped by a $2.3bn Arctic military satcom contract with Canada's Defence Investment Agency that let Telesat add 69 funded satellites and take the initial fleet from 156 to 225. "Telesat Lightspeed is fully funded and we remain on track to commence global commercial service around the end of Q1 2028," Goldberg told investors in August 2026. Planned 2026 Lightspeed spending was raised to C$1.3-1.5bn from C$1.0-1.2bn; backlog rose faster. None of that reaches the December calendar. On the publicly traded shares, which represent a minority of an economic interest held largely by Loral and Canada's PSP, the stock sits at 2.44x trailing and 1.96x forward sales, with a trailing free-cash-flow yield of -83.7%.

Viasat's aviation book grew while its home-internet rump shrank

Viasat, which sells satellite broadband and voice to homes, in-flight connectivity to airlines, maritime service to ships and satcom to governments, reported June-quarter revenue of $1.2bn, down 1%, with adjusted EBITDA of $381m against $408m and a net loss of $52m narrowed by lower interest expense as debt was repaid. Fixed services revenue fell 27% to 115,000 US subscribers at $111 average revenue each. Aviation revenue rose 11% across roughly 4,530 commercial aircraft. Awards were $1.3bn, up 10%, of which defense and advanced technologies took $524m, up 22%; backlog rose almost 19% to $4.2bn. Net debt of $4,835m equals 3.2x trailing EBITDA, against 3.6x a year earlier.

"We are exiting the year stronger than we entered," chief executive Mark Dankberg wrote in the shareholder letter for the year to 31 March 2026, citing record backlog and the multi-orbit fleet expansion.

The price went the other way. Viasat fell 19.7% over the thirty days to 21 October, and the fall began the day after good news: the shares jumped 8.4% on 9 October when Raymond James reiterated Outperform with a $107 target on the completed ViaSat-3 constellation, then gave up 14.9% over the next three sessions. At 1.84x trailing and 1.75x forward sales, 7.6x trailing enterprise value to EBITDA and a 6.8% free-cash-flow yield, it is priced where it stood in May, at 1.71x sales, before the deleveraging and the larger backlog. The company is still loss-making: consensus EPS is -$1.42 for the year to March 2027 and -$1.44 the year after.

Where a constellation really took the money

Price, in the one place it is observable, moved up. Starlink's Aviation Global Unlimited plan went to $20,000 a month from $10,000, annoying private-jet operators. What Starlink is taking is installed base, not margin: United Airlines had fitted it to 540 of 1,646 aircraft by 25 August and expects 1,000 by year-end, yet Viasat's aviation line still grew, which implies the connected fleet is expanding faster than incumbent terminals are stripped out.

Gogo, which runs air-to-ground networks for business and commercial aviation, is the clean casualty. June-quarter revenue slipped 1.4% but gross margin fell to 42.0% from 47.3%, and William Blair cut the stock to Market Perform citing Starlink competition, net debt and pressure on air-to-ground net additions, with fleet customers such as NetJets able to switch. At 0.32x sales and a -17.9% free-cash-flow yield it has been falling for a year, down 77.8%, long before October. Iridium, selling narrowband voice, data and internet-of-things connectivity, reported third-quarter revenue of $245.7m, up 8%, service revenue up 13% and 2,696,000 billable subscribers against 2,542,000; net income was $106.9m against $37.1m. It fell 8.1% on the month and its forward price-to-earnings of 39.8x sits above a trailing 28.9x, consensus expecting EPS to fall back from a figure flattered by its Aireon purchase.

One de-rating the accounts explain, one they do not

Telesat's is explained: a halved revenue base, negative EBITDA and US$2.1bn falling due over fourteen months make the equity a function of what creditors accept, and nothing in the Lightspeed backlog changes the date. Viasat's is harder to attach to anything it disclosed; the likelier reading is the repricing of everything space-adjacent, which ran deeper in the pure plays than in the operators. AST SpaceMobile fell 33% over the same thirty days, Spire 27%, Rocket Lab 24%, against 0.4% for the S&P 500 tracker, after SpaceX bought a nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio on 8-9 October and Rocket Lab's Neutron first flight slipped to 2027. Globalstar sat it out, finishing the month 0.4% higher, so the selling discriminated.

Starlink adds roughly 1,500 satellites a year and launches every four or five days. That curve moves continuously and cannot produce a thirty-day step change in anyone's contracted prices. A loan agreement can, and Telesat's matures on 6 December.