Tag Archives: Maxar Technologies

If anyone thought MDA was leaving Canada, they better think again. The announcement on Monday that they had acquired Ottawa based Neptec Design Group is an example of how the company is consolidating its hold on key technologies.

In an ongoing effort to grow revenues from the Canadian business unit of Maxar Technologies, MDA’s Group President, Mike Greenley, continues to reorganize the company.

It was a good news, bad news quarterly conference call for Maxar Technologies which includes Canadian subsidiary MDA.

Wendover Productions is a documentary production company that produces among other things, the equivalent of HowTo information in video format. Recently they produced Space: The Next Trillion Dollar Industry, a background information video on the commercial space sector.

The satellite manufacturing market for larger geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites has been lagging these past few years, so the announcement of two GEO contracts by SSL, a Maxar subsidiary, is welcome news for the company.

Maxar recently held its 2018 investor days. The purpose? Sell institutional investors on why the company now known as Maxar Technologies, formed from MDA, SSL, Digitalglobe and Radiant, is a company going places.  The message, institutional investors should have a larger Maxar position in their portfolios and they should market the company to their clients.  

Maxar Technologies President and CEO Howard Lance was on CNBC this afternoon talking about the new company formed from the acquisition of DigitalGlobe by MDA. During the interview he said they would be using a refurbished SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle for the Canadian government RADARSAT Constellation Mission.

The stars have once again aligned for Canada’s leading space firm. Earlier this month, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., now known simply as MDA, a Canadian global communications and information enterprise providing technology solutions to commercial and government organizations worldwide, completed its $2.4 billion purchase of DigitalGlobe, an American-based global provider of high resolution Earth imagery and geospatial information.

On October 2nd MDA’s acquisition of DigitialGlobe closed. The new company formed from this acquisition will be called Maxar Technologies and will have 6,500 employees with $3B in 2016 revenues. Contrast that to January 2008 when MDA thought it had sold its space business to then Alliant Techsystems (ATK), now Orbital ATK, and we’re planning on leaving the space market. Then, as in now, context …