What happened
Shares of Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp (SFTW) jumped on Thursday. The stock rose as much as 34.7% but is up about 25% as of 1:30 p.m. EST.
The special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is trading higher on news that it has entered an agreement to list BlackSky, a real-time geospatial intelligence company, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
The listing is a part of a merger with Osprey Technology. Set to trade under the ticker BKSY, the transaction is expected to close in July of this year.
"This transaction fully funds our growth plans and accelerates our vision of providing our customers with a 'first-to-know' advantage," explained BlackSky CEO Brian O'Toole in a press release about the deal. "This is an important inflection point for our industry as commercial and government users demand access to real time information about the changes that matter most to them."
Now what
Osprey CEO David DiDomenico is optimistic about the merger's potential, citing growth and opportunity in the space economy. BlackSky's low-cost image capture and its on-demand analytics will help organizations better detect and track change, he explained.
"BlackSky's continuously growing, proprietary database is a valuable competitive advantage, and we believe its vertically integrated operations serve as a major point of distinction among other space analytics companies," DiDomenico said.
