{"id":91405,"date":"2026-10-29T01:39:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T17:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/we-just-sold-a-business-for-50-times-defense-multiples-lift-space\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T01:39:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T17:39:19","slug":"we-just-sold-a-business-for-50-times-defense-multiples-lift-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/we-just-sold-a-business-for-50-times-defense-multiples-lift-space\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe Just Sold a Business for 50 Times\u201d: Defense Multiples Lift Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Karl
Karl Schmidt, managing director at KippsDeSanto & Co., on the \u201cAfter SPCX\u201d panel at Silicon Valley Space Week, with Matt Oguz of Venture Science. Photo: SatNews<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fifty times EBITDA, in a corner of defense that used to trade at six to eight.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the multiple Karl Schmidt, managing director at investment bank KippsDeSanto & Co., said his firm recently got for an exotic-munitions company. He shared it Tuesday at Silicon Valley Space Week, on the Satellite Innovation panel \u201cAfter SPCX: The Public Market\u2019s Verdict on Space,\u201d named for the Nasdaq ticker SpaceX has carried since its June IPO and moderated by Alexis S\u00e1inz, a partner at Hogan Lovells. The number goes a long way toward explaining what\u2019s driving space valuations right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole munitions kinetic piece of M&A was always six, seven, eight times EBITDA, and a very small portion of folks that were interested in buying and investing,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cThat\u2019s flipped over. We just sold a business for 50 times that was on the exotic munitions side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Older technology is getting a premium, too. \u201cOn Cold War munitions, we just sold a business for 30 times, based on scarcity value,\u201d he said. He did not name either company.<\/p>\n

Drones run on orbit<\/h2>\n

Schmidt tied the munitions boom straight back to space. Drones, one-way-effect weapons, and counter-drone systems all depend on space for connectivity and positioning, he said, \u201cwhere space is needed for the infrastructure piece of supporting that.\u201d He called it a fundamental change in how wars are fought: drones on land, at sea, and in the air, all needing assured connectivity and assured positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT).<\/p>\n

Mike Collett, managing partner at Promus Ventures, said that defense premium now sits inside private space prices. \u201cThe multiple increase within the defense side, which space has participated enormously in, is a massive reason for all of the very high valuations we\u2019re seeing on the private side today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Collett called it \u201cunfathomable\u201d how companies with so much government revenue are now valued. He credited Palantir and Anduril with showing that government business can carry tech-style recurring revenue. \u201cThe best customers for space these days are sovereigns and governments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thirty space deals in a decade<\/h2>\n

KippsDeSanto works mostly on the sell side of the middle market, on deals with enterprise values of roughly $50 million to $600 million. Schmidt said the firm has done about 30 space or space-related deals in the last decade: around three a year, and about 10% of its deal volume.<\/p>\n

Europe is part of the buyer pool. About a third of KippsDeSanto\u2019s buyer groups now include large European acquirers, Schmidt said, as demand for sovereign space and defense capability outruns what European companies can supply.<\/p>\n

Collett put the math simply: a public company\u2019s value climbs when its earnings rise or its multiple does. \u201cWhen you get both of them, good things happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

KippsDeSanto & Co. is a sponsor of Silicon Valley Space Week, which SatNews produces.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews Karl Schmidt, managing director at KippsDeSanto & Co., on the \u201cAfter SPCX\u201d panel at Silicon Valley Space Week, with Matt Oguz of Venture Science. Photo: SatNews Fifty times EBITDA, in a corner of defense that used to trade at six to eight. That\u2019s the multiple Karl Schmidt, managing director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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-91405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91405"}],"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=91405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}