A planned Space Florida conduit financing for an obligor code-named "Project Jaguar" appears to be the first deal in the works that would use a financing tool authorized by last year's One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Tax-exempt private activity bonds for spaceport projects.
"To the best of our knowledge it is," said Ron Lau, senior vice president of corporate development and capital programs at Space Florida, the state's aerospace finance and development authority, where he also serves as interim chief investment officer.
"We often talk to the bankers and the lawyers," Lau said in an interview earlier this week, adding that those conversations have pretty consistently indicated that there isn't "necessarily anything else in the works in terms of a PABs deal that involves this new spaceport legislation."
As of Thursday afternoon New York time, emails sent by The Bond Buyer to spaceports in Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Georgia, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia had turned up no evidence of another such spaceport deal currently in the works.
"We are in the early stages of gathering information and talking with several banks that facilitate this kind of work," said David Smith, CEO of Mojave Air and Space Port, which is located in California. "So nothing is in place at this point, but it is something that we are considering for the future."
At its Nov. 13, 2025 meeting, the Space Florida Board of Directors unanimously approved Space Florida management's request "for authority to enter an Engagement Letter with Project Jaguar to seek conduit type structure funding in the capital market to acquire facilities and equipment" in an amount of up to $235 million "to be funded by taxable and tax-exempt bonds," draft meeting minutes contained in a recent board document show.
Lau declined to identify the company behind Project Jaguar.
Space Florida has done "a good bit" of taxable conduit debt deals over the course of the roughly 20 years that it has been in existence, "so the tax-exempt financing is really just an additional tool on top of the thing that we've already been doing for quite a long time," he said.
"Our structure allows for other financial efficiencies, so that's why we've been successful in doing the taxable debt deals in the market as well," Lau said.
At this stage, it remains unclear how much of the up to $235 million deal might consist of tax-exempt PABs, he said.
Space Florida would own the assets and lease them to Project Jaguar, Lau said. Asked when the Project Jaguar deal might hit the market, Lau declined to estimate.
Some attorneys think it's possible that a deal using tax-exempt PABs for a spaceport project could come to market this year.
Issuers and space industry businesses "are having active conversations with bankers about how spaceport bonds might fit into their capital plans," Johnny Hutchinson, a partner at law firm Nixon Peabody LLP, said in written comments provided to The Bond Buyer last week.
"Because this is a new area of eligibility for tax-exempt finance, businesses that would operate spaceport eligible assets often have not had any exposure to the specialized rules and unique economic trade-offs that apply in the tax-exempt market," said Hutchinson, who works in Nixon Peabody's project finance and public finance practices.
Consequently, "there is a certain amount of education that has to be done before a company can decide whether and when working with a governmental issuer to have spaceport bonds issued for a project might make sense for them," he said.
"But there does appear to be genuine interest in the market in using spaceport bonds," Hutchinson said. "I would not be surprised to see a deal come to market this year."
Ed Oswald, a partner at law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he is a member of its tax group, also believes that a transaction involving tax-exempt PABs for a spaceport project could occur this year.
Oswald suspects that the process the market is currently going through is one where potential parties to such transactions are working to familiarize themselves with spaceport PABs and the opportunities they might afford.
"On the buyside of transactions, this is a brand new credit, a brand new device," Oswald said. "At the same time, the space industry – which never really had a relationship with the tax-exempt bond market and is a growing industry – now has this new financing tool."
While "everyone's kind of in a learning moment," there is "definitely a lot of interest in this," he said, adding that "I think it's just a matter of time before the first deal comes to market."
The OBBBA provision authorizing the issuance of spaceport PABs, treats them similarly to airport PABs, Oswald said. Still, the buyside will need to get comfortable with the business models of space industry companies, he said.
"If you're issuing an airport bond and the lessee is American Airlines, well, we know how that industry works," the attorney said, adding that the airline has passengers and pays rent on the terminal space it leases.
While a space company issuing spaceport PABs would have "basically the same structural economics," the buyside will want to understand the business model of those companies to ensure they can "pay the bond debt service on time," Oswald said.
So how big of an event might the arrival of the first tax-exempt PABs deal for a spaceport represent for the muni market?
"I don't know if it's that big of a deal in the whole scheme of things," said Jeff Timlin, a managing partner at Sage Advisory Services where he serves as lead portfolio manager of the firm's municipal bond strategies, adding that the significance of such an event is likely to hinge on how big a sector tax-exempt PABs for spaceports might ultimately become within the muni market.
If the spaceport PABs market were to mirror the type of rapid growth seen in the pre-paid gas bond market, "it will change the dynamic and the structure of the municipal market," Timlin said, adding that, conversely, if such PABs in terms of their total issuance end up representing only a tiny slice of the overall muni market, "I don't think it's really a big to-do."
