Raymond James analyst Richard Prentiss raised the price target on ViaSat (NASDAQ: VSAT) to $74.00 (from $50.00) while maintaining a Outperform rating.

The analyst comments "We believe VSAT’s portfolio of spectrum could be worth ~$16B (excluding portion leased to ASTS/Ligado), while IRDM’s portfolio could be worth ~$3.5B, if we use comparable valuations to the recent large transactions involving SATS and GSAT. Obviously, true value would depend on use case, TAM, and in a sale case, the buyer. And importantly, both companies’ spectrum portfolios are at least partially utilized by existing businesses (and VSAT pursuing the Equatys JV with Space42), so the portion that could or would be monetized for each remain big questions. But, we see incremental optionality at both companies, particularly given the mobility- and emergency-driven narrowband nature of existing LBand operations (i.e., not bandwidth intensive) leaving potential “spare” spectrum even on top of existing businesses, that we feel is particularly significant at VSAT."