Posted: Fri, Nov 3, 2006, 6:56 AM ET (1156 GMT)
Mobile satellite phone company Globalstar made a successful return to the stock market on Thursday, with shares in the company rising slightly in their debut. Globalstar sold 7.5 million shares in its initial public offering Thursday at $17 a share; those shares closed up 52 cents at the end of trading Thursday on the Nasdaq. The company plans to use the proceeds of the IPO to help fund the development of their next-generation low Earth orbit satellite constellation, which is scheduled to begin deployment around the end of the decade as their original system reaches the end of its on-orbit life. The original Globalstar has also been publicly traded, but the stock became essentially worthless after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2002, burdened by billions in debt incurred to develop and launch the original system. Globalstar was acquired by an investment company, Thermo Capital Partners, in 2004, which reorganized the firm and brought it out of Chapter 11. Globalstar and other satellite telephony companies have seen a surge of interest in the wake of Hurricane Katrina last year, providing alternate means of communications that are not as vulnerable to disruption as terrestrial systems.

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