New York-based private equity firm ATL Partners has purchased Geost, an Arizona-based maker of sensors that can detect and protect satellites from other spacecraft and space debris, for an undisclosed sum, Defense One reported Wednesday.
ATL plans to further build up Geost through acquisitions and investments and intends to boost the company’s budgets on internal research and development efforts, hire more engineers and construct new manufacturing facilities.
“We want to do a lot of really strategic, targeted, bolt on acquisitions,” said Michael Kramer, a principal with ATL Partners. “We want to think about expanding our product capabilities into complimentary adjacencies.”
Josh Hartman, a vice president at Geost, said the company specializes in the development of small sensors for smaller satellites. The company partners with Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) and other larger defense primes and supplies some of its products to the Department of Defense and the intelligence community.
“They’re a company that has a high degree of differentiation with their technology,” Kramer said of Geost. “When they’re putting together sensors for space domain awareness, their ability to produce these sensors, at a much lower size, weight and power plus price is very important when you think about where the procurement efforts in [the] Space Force and Air Force are going.”
