Fire Point to sell 30% stake to UAE sovereign wealth fund for $760 million – BBC

The owners of Ukrainian defence tech company Fire Point plan to sell a 30% stake to a sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates. BBC News Ukraine reported this, citing sources within the company familiar with the deal’s details.

According to the report, the transaction is valued at around $760 million, implying an overall company valuation of $2.5 billion. The buyer is EDGE Group, a defence conglomerate owned by the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund.

BBC notes that Fire Point has already submitted the relevant documents to the Antimonopoly Committee. If completed, the deal would, by a wide margin, become the largest transaction in the history of Ukrainian defence tech.

Fire Point is a manufacturer of deep-strike drones FP-1 (the most widely used long-range drone in Ukraine), mid-strike drones FP-2, FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles, as well as FP-7 and FP-9 ballistic missiles. The company also plans to produce its own air defence systems.

Fire Point co-founder Denys Shtilerman first spoke publicly about plans to sell a stake in the company to a sovereign wealth fund of a foreign country during a meeting with journalists in late November. At the time, he noted that the prospective buyer country has even lower levels of bureaucracy than Ukraine, as well as cheaper gas and electricity prices.