[Via Satellite 08-19-2015] Mexican telecommunications company Elara <\/b>Comunicaciones<\/b> has recently struck a partnership with private equity firm Northgate Capital<\/b> that will enable the company\u2019s \u201caggressive\u201d growth plans over the next five years. In exchange for a control stake in the teleport, Northgate will invest up to $38 million in the company through primary and secondary transactions so as to facilitate Elara\u2019s continued expansion of its satellite-delivered voice and data communications services throughout Mexico, its home market, as well as the U.S. and Latin America.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the last 10 years we have been growing at a very rapid pace. We have, in our first 10 years, grown an estimated 35 to 40 percent compound growth, yearly,\u201d Jorge Villarreal, Elara\u2019s founder and chief executive officer, told Via Satellite.<\/i> As resources to support this rapid organic growth began to wear thin, in 2013 the company began to analyze the requirements to continue the swift expansion. Elara reached out to investment funds, eventually striking a deal with Northgate for a control stake in late 2014, which was approved by regulators earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Northgate will now act as a major financial and corporate arm for Elara, and will take part in strategic decisions for the commercial plans and objectives, as well as with the expansion, growth and organizational initiatives of the operator. \u201cThe partnership will allow the company to continue growing with ambitious objectives for the next five years,\u201d Villarreal added.<\/p>\n
Elara currently operates more than 6000 Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) for corporate voice, data, and video. The company also operates several satellites in Ku-, Ka- and C-band that deliver telecommunications to remote areas. Although Elara\u2019s main market share is in Mexico as a teleport service provider, it has been executing growth plans for the last several years to swell service to areas its satellites already provide coverage to, such as Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru and Chile.<\/p>\n
Elara\u2019s main customer base is in the enterprise sector as well as a few main verticals, including oil and gas, maritime, and finance, among others. The company receives the largest chunk of business mainly from telecommunication carriers in Mexico that use Elara\u2019s satellite networks to complement their coverage in remote regions when the traditional ground networks fail to provide sufficient coverage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe help them to reach these customers and, at the end, we complement their solution using satellite services,\u201d said Villarreal. It\u2019s in these services that Elara sees the potential for growth. \u201cWe plan to continue growing organically indefinitely in Elara\u2019s traditional business, which is providing telecommunications to remote areas. Obviously, we want to combine the experience that Elara has and eventually grow inorganically.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the satellite coverage already in place, the company is looking to use what it has learned in its home country to provide similar services in the U.S. and other countries in its footprint going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of Mexico \u2014 and it\u2019s a very similar situation to other countries in Latin America \u2014 we have a very good base of potential users. The terrain in Latin American countries is often irregular and difficult, and terrestrial methods don\u2019t reach the full market potential of the country,\u201d he said, noting that Elara has been positioning itself to allow expansion and complement the lack of coverage provided by terrestrial telecommunications companies in these regions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe situation that we see in other countries is also similar [to Mexico] in the way that there is a large opportunity in areas that are still under the coverage area and the satellites play an integral role there as well, because the speed at which the terrestrial networks are growing is very slow, and some areas it\u2019s not reaching fast enough. Elara can help fill those gaps with satellite communications.\u201d<\/p>\n
Villarreal says the company is primarily exploring telecommunications solutions that take advantage of both terrestrial and satellite communication technology going forward. They are also looking to invest in High Throughput Satellite (HTS) technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very interested in, and in active conversations about, telecommunication technologies that will be available in the regions of Mexico and Latin America for high throughput satellites in Ku- and Ka-band,\u201d said Villarreal. \u201cWe think that will open interesting niches and market opportunities where the actual expertise of Elara is a great asset to facilitate our entrance into these segments.\u201d<\/p>\n
HTS can open the market to enable higher bandwidth at a low cost for Business-to-Business (B2B) customers in the corporate market, a mass market aimed at Internet for the end user that is currently being neglected.<\/p>\n
Recent changes in the telecommunications law in Mexico are also opening a window to new opportunities for Elara.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been an opening for new businesses, fewer barriers to entry and competition in new markets,\u201d said Villarreal. \u201cThe new law allows the use of existing infrastructure, increasing competitiveness and reducing the price to the end user, so the use of telecoms will increase substantially in Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elara has already begun the process of expanding products and services throughout new regions. With the Northgate agreement falling into place in parallel with expansion plans, the new funding will allow the operator to continue executing its plans to magnify market presence over a critical growth period.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis process of expanding our efforts in other countries, in Latin America and the United States, and offering new products and services has started already,\u201d said Villarreal. \u201cIn the next three years I think will be critical not only to continue implementation of this plan but also to accelerate the pace at which we\u2019ve been doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 08-19-2015] Mexican telecommunications company Elara Comunicaciones has recently struck a partnership with private equity firm Northgate Capital that will enable the company\u2019s \u201caggressive\u201d growth plans over the next five years. In exchange for a control stake in the teleport, Northgate will invest up to $38 million in the company through primary and secondary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}