EchoStar - Earnings Call - Q2 2022

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the EchoStar Corporation conference call for second quarter twenty twenty two results. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Terry Brown. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and thanks to everybody for joining our second quarter earnings call. I'm joined today by Hamid Akhavan, our CEO and President David Raynor, COO and CFO Pradman Call, President of Hughes and Dean Manson, General Counsel and Secretary. As usual, we invite media to participate in a listen only mode on the call and ask that you not identify participants or their firms in your report. We also do not allow recording, which we ask that you respect. Let me now turn the call over to Dean for the Safe Harbor disclosure.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Terri. All statements we make during this call other than statements of historical fact constitute forward looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to be materially different from historical results and from any future results expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. For a list of those factors and risks, please refer to our annual report on Form 10 ks for the year ended 12/31/2021, filed on February 23, and our subsequent filings made with the SEC. All cautionary statements we make during the call should be understood as being applicable to any forward looking statements we make wherever they appear.

You should carefully consider the risks described in our reports and should not place any undue reliance on forward looking statements. We assume no responsibility for updating forward looking statements. I'll now turn the call over to Hamed.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Jean, and good day, everyone. As some of you are aware, Dave Raynor, our chief operating officer and chief financial officer, has decided to retire. He has agreed to stay on board to assist through the transition to his successor, and an executive search is already underway. You know, Dave has served EchoStar and its shareholders diligently during his, eighteen years with the company, and we thank him for his many contributions and wish him well in the future. As for agenda for the call today, first, the team will provide a brief overview of activity from the second quarter.

After that, I will offer some comments on the business and our strategic planning process. We'll then move to question and answer session. Let me now turn it over to Pradman.

Speaker 4

Amit, Hughes had a solid second quarter in 2022, one that included $426,000,000 of new enterprise orders, one of our highest quarters of record. I'm proud to report that our HughesNet satellite Internet service has been recognized not only as the best satellite Internet provider of 2022, but also the best rural Internet provider by US News and World Report three sixty reviews. This is the third time in a row that we've been recognized as the best satellite ISP, and both these accolades are a strong endorsement of our commitment to serving rural America. To that end, our team continues to focus on improving the North American consumer offering and customer satisfaction. Our new service plans which we began rolling out earlier this year are being well received by customers who are enjoying more high speed data each month and our ARPU remains strong increasing from the first quarter.

We continue to optimize capacity allocations to yield the best performance possible from our satellite fleet. Looking ahead in our U. S. Consumer market, we're excited about our new HughesNet Fusion service plan, which we will soft launch first with existing customers in August and then select US market beginning in September. You will recall that we announced this first of a kind hybrid geo and wireless capability for consumer services in March at the satellite show.

Combining satellite and wireless technologies enable us to deliver an overall more responsive Internet experience to meet market demand. Additionally, we remain a proud participant in the FCC affordable connectivity program that helps ensure eligible households have the high speed Internet service they need. Moving to our North American enterprise business, in the second quarter, we executed an agreement worth more than $180,000,000 with Gogo Business Aviation. This is the first sale of our flat panel electronically steerable antenna technology, including 2,000 antennas with service to start in 2024 using one web LEO capacity and network. Also within the in flight connectivity market, we completed a multiyear development and deployment project, enabling SES to launch in flight services on SES 17 using the Jupiter system platform.

And our partners, Talis, completed deployment of Jupiter models to initiate in flight Wi Fi for Spirit Airlines. In The U. S. Managed services arena, our business remains solid. As just one example, we completed a project for a retail customer that involved upgrading network equipment at more than 2,000 stores in less than five months.

And we continue to see success with contracts and deployments in the retail, retail petroleum and energy markets. In our OneWeb program, we continue deliveries of production gateways and systems as planned. We've shipped 23 gateways so far and expect to complete all gateways in 2023. We've also started delivery of the production models for user terminals. Our defense group had a strong second quarter also, winning add ons from the US Space Force SATCOM programs, US Navy five gs networks and classified systems development.

It's a civilian government market. The team secured a full year renewal of our contract with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, providing managed terrestrial and satellite broadband services to multiple agencies. Also, the group received an award from the US Postal Service for managed restaurant broadband services at 150 sites, bringing the total number of US Postal Service locations in our portfolio to more than seven fifty. Now to our international operations. As in The U.

Our priority in the Latin American market is to maximize yield on our capacity. For the consumer business, this means value steering through tactics such as selective screening and capacity optimized price plan. Our ARPU trend is positive, increasing from the first quarter. We are also pursuing high value enterprise and government projects in this region. For example, during the second quarter, we won two additional orders from resellers to deliver broadband to schools throughout Colombia using our Ka band services, bringing our total to nearly 10,000 sites under this project.

In Brazil, we secured a five year contract extension with one of the biggest utility companies in the country, providing fleet automation for 3,000 vehicles. A large Brazilian customer expanded and extended our contract connecting 1,700 additional retail sites to the satellite network. And we won a new retail customer in Brazil with an 80 site managed SD WAN contract. In Europe, a large multinational oil and gas retailer extended our contract to support their digital transformation with higher speed services and managed WiFi. An important element of our strategy is to expand connectivity in emerging markets, focusing on large populations and businesses either unserved or underserved by terrestrial broadband services.

We continue to successfully execute on this strategy, leveraging the strong acceptance of our Jupiter platform worldwide. As you know, in January 2022, we completed the formation of our joint venture in India with Bharti Airtel, now operating under the Hughes Communications India brand, HCI, the largest satellite service operator in India. It secured its first major win with a five year contract with Indian Oil Corporation to provide managed SD WAN across 10,000 sites. And we launched nationwide high throughput satellite services targeting enterprises, telcos and small to medium businesses using the GSAT-twenty nine and GSAT-eleven satellite of Israel. Indonesia is fast developing into a highly active and important region for us.

During the quarter, PSN Pacific satellite to Sentara selected Fuze to power their third high throughput satellite with 11 Jupiter gateway that will provide a 100 gigabit per second. And we received an order from Lintas Satta to supply the Jupiter system to support cellular backhaul over satellite for 390 LTE base stations. We look forward to the launch of our Jupiter three satellite as it will bring significant additional capacity to our market as well as the ability to offer high speed service plans as demanded by our customers. The satellite continues to progress at Maxar and is currently in the thermal vacuum chamber where it can be tested in conditions similar to the space environment. Once this testing is complete, we'll move it into final integration.

We anticipate that the satellite will be launched during the 2023. Let me now turn this call over to Dave.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Pradman, and hello, everyone. Our revenue in the 2022 was flat compared to the same period last year. We have managed to sustain our revenue with higher equipment sales to our enterprise and government customers, both domestically and internationally, while at the same time managing the capacity constraints and other factors across our consumer business. This change in our revenue mix has and will continue to put some pressure on our gross margin. Our adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was $168,000,000 decreasing 10% from last year.

The decline in adjusted EBITDA was driven primarily by our gross margin as our operating expenses have remained relatively flat. Inflation began to impact our operations in 2021, and we have experienced increased costs in certain functional areas, including field services and customer care. We are making every effort to minimize this impact to our operations and protect our margins. Free cash flow defined as adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx was $92,000,000 during the second quarter, increasing $38,000,000 sequentially. Meanwhile, our balance sheet remains one of the strongest in the industry, and we continue to seek opportunities to deploy cash for growth.

In the 2022, we bought back 1,900,000.0 shares of our stock in the open market at a cost of $43,000,000 Let me turn the call back over to Hamid.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Dave.

Speaker 3

On our first quarter earnings call, I shared some of my initial thoughts about EchoStar, our competitive environment and our unique strengths, including our strong balance sheet, our global presence and trusted reputation, our engineering expertise, and our S band spectrum assets. Since then, I have conducted a series of in-depth interviews of the various business lines and functional areas throughout the company in order to ascertain operational strengths and areas of opportunity. While I'm not ready to disclose a specific road map, I will share some of the process with you as we chart a strategic course. You know, this is a methodical undertaking designed to safeguard our financial stability and independence while capitalizing on long term growth opportunities of existing business lines and new ones, including potential acquisitions. We are pursuing three parallel work streams that I call horizons, referring to three consecutive time windows.

I would like to repeat that we are working on all three time horizons in parallel. First, for Horizon one, we are looking at current business and ways to optimize both our operations and our offerings over the next year or so. We have touched on some of this already with the introduction of the HughesNet Fusion service, value steering and more precisely managing churn To help combat profitability erosion due to the shift in revenue mix, we are focusing on capacity yield management rather than on subscriber growth. Simply and similarly, in the international markets, we'll direct our efforts towards the most scalable and profitable regions. Across the organization, we are identifying areas for cross functional collaboration, simplifying and centralizing our structure for greater efficiency.

Through these actions, we intend to improve our operating and financial trends in the near horizon. For the couple of years following Horizon one, which we are calling Horizon two, we are developing and defining organic growth opportunities and preparing the organization to pursue them. This includes a sophisticated go to market plan to best monetize our fleet capacity once Jupiter three enters service. We are outlining the focus areas for our enterprise business globally and plan to increase our scale through internal investments and potential complementary acquisitions. We will also pursue growth by leveraging our managed services portfolio and hybrid LEO GEO business solutions.

For Horizon three, we are currently evaluating opportunities for new long term avenues of growth, including commercialization of our S band assets and potential M and A opportunities. Regarding our S band initiatives, I would like to share a couple of high level updates. EchoStar Mobile, our EU licensee, introduced our pan European LoRa enabled Internet of Things network at the LoRaWAN World Expo in Paris. This network is the world's first bidirectional real time LoRa enabled satellite service, and it provides seamless coverage of Europe combined with the ability for hybrid devices to roam onto existing LoRaWAN terrestrial networks. We are on track for commercial service launch in late twenty twenty two, and we are excited to help transform the satellite IoT market with cost effective, reliable, and standard spaced IoT services.

EchoStar Mobile made significant contributions of S band satellite terminals and accompanying voice and data services to EU and national government humanitarian relief efforts associated with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. We are grateful to our many team members across Europe who did a superb job in responding to this crisis, and we believe this effort demonstrated the vital role of high quality mobile satellite services in the region, potentially worldwide. I know you're eager to hear more specifics on our strategic and financial direction, and I look forward to sharing additional information with you on future earnings calls. Let me now turn it over to the operator to start our Q and A session.

Speaker 0

Our first question comes from the line of Rick Prentiss from Raymond James. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Thanks. Good morning, everyone.

Speaker 1

Good morning.

Speaker 7

Hey. Good morning, Rick.

Speaker 6

Dave, it's been great working with you. This might be the last earnings call, guess. So congrats and enjoy retirement. Wanted to start first with Jupiter three. Update us maybe more specifically as far as what's causing the delays I think you know supply chain, manufacturing, other projects may be jumping ahead but comfortable are you that we now have a pretty good date as far as when Jupiter three could get launched?

And when do you expect in service to be if you expect Jupiter three launch to be in first half?

Speaker 7

Mehdi?

Speaker 4

Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 3

Please, Pragman. Please continue.

Speaker 4

Okay. Yeah. Hi. You know, as you know, we are now in the we have the satellite in the chamber, which is one of the biggest hurdles that one has when you build satellites. And the testing so far is going good.

And so we're getting more and more confident that the dates that we have projected are going to be met, you know, give or take a few days here and there. So we we got to feel good about it. I think, typically, once we launch the satellite, in a couple of months after that, we should be in service. So, you know, we're we're still being we we can't predict the exact date we'll launch the satellite. But by the end of the first half, I think we should be in service as a as a total new satellite into service.

Speaker 6

Okay. Good. And obviously some major industry events and news over the last couple of weeks, one of which was OneWeb and EUTELSAT proposing a merger. Help us understand what that means for EchoStar and Hughes since they're both customers of yours and what does it mean longer term as far as the relationships you had as far as having the ability to sell LEO capacity into India and The U. S?

Speaker 4

Go ahead. Yeah. Thank you. Really, it's a very positive development for us, think. Both as you mentioned, Rick, EUTELSAT and OneWeb are very good customers of ours.

So we feel good that we will continue to do business with them going forward. The current contracts that we have, which are significant will continue. No changes are expected in that contract. In addition, as you as you know in the past, we are strong believers in the GEO LEO concept. And I think this merger along with the relationships we have with them really facilitates the GEO Leo advantages that we've been talking about for the last six months.

So all in all, we are we are positive and we hope it'll enhance not only our business but obviously using SAS and OneWeb's business.

Speaker 6

And any specific changes to what you expect to be able to do in India or in The US maybe with those the one web relationship that you had?

Speaker 4

No. I think this is the the the the the agreements are still very valid. I think if if anything, we are hopeful that this will accelerate the process of starting phase two, which gets us much more capacity and much higher speeds than Phase one because potentially this could make the funding for Phase two and one a lot more practical and imminent this stage.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thanks. I'll come back in for questions if there's time.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 0

One more for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Michael Rollins from Citi. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Thanks and good morning.

Speaker 3

Couple of questions.

Speaker 8

First question is just in terms of the performance of the Hughes consumer business. Did you see any impact during the quarter from competition, which could be fixed wireless access, some of these emerging fiber builds or any other LEO competition? I have another question after this.

Speaker 3

Prakrit, I'd like to direct that question to you as well. Okay.

Speaker 4

We are obviously losing some subscribers to other technologies and other LEO networks. The biggest threat right now clearly is Starlink because they are they can address the latency issue that, you know, the geo satellites got. So we're losing some subs clearly to Starlinks and

Speaker 5

we've

Speaker 4

been working hard to try to come up with solutions that will compete on this latency issue. Now, solution we are hoping in the interim will be fusions, the fusions that we talked about, which is a combination of of geo and LTE capability, which will address the fusion fusion will address the latency issue very well. So we're hoping once we do that, that should reduce our churn from the people who need faster latency compared to the the other services that don't need it. In addition, you know, 70% of our traffic is video And video broadcast video primarily. And that that application doesn't require fast latency.

So we're hoping that we take the combination of customers that we have that don't require low latency and the introduction of fusion service beginning in August and September this year that we will address the customers that are turning out. But having said that, we will churn out some customers to Starlink. They're formidable competitor, and we'll we'll have to continue to battle it out with them. But I think the market will support two or three suppliers of this service, of high speed service. And so we're we're we're comfortable that we will we will we'll be one of those two or three suppliers that will stay in the business successfully.

Speaker 8

Thanks. And the second question is I've noticed that as you've embarked on evaluating the Horizon one through three review, you've continued as a company with share repurchases. And curious on the one hand, the governing thought, continuing your repurchases while thinking about some of these future strategic opportunities that you may have, particularly on the S band. And does that infer that whatever you may do on S band that you're hoping for it to be very limited from an EchoStar balance sheet perspective and to create a platform that others are investing and funding to take advantage of the opportunity? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Dave, may I direct it to you first and if there's additional comments I'll add at the end of your comments.

Speaker 5

Yes, Mike. We continue to view the stock as being grossly undervalued. And so we're continuing the buyback program. It's something that we continually evaluate. Right now, we're only using a fraction of our operating free cash flow on that share repurchase.

So it's not like we're eroding the balance sheet by doing it. Maybe we're not growing the cash balance as much as we could. But I think we will continue to evaluate that. In terms of what an S band network structure would look like, I think that is very much still in play as to exactly what we will build out. We're aggressively pursuing those opportunities to evaluate that network as Amit has discussed.

And I'm sure he's willing to discuss it further. But right now, we're very confident in the position of our balance sheet and our capability of making significant investments going forward.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Dave. And

Speaker 8

well, just one follow-up to that. As you think about the free cash flow, do you think about it in terms of the free cash flow that the core consumer business throws off relative to the free cash flow of the enterprise segment and the product segment relative to maybe some of the incubation projects like the S band? And is there a way that you think about that internally that would be helpful for investors to think about from an external perspective?

Speaker 5

Yes. I think we evaluate all of it, right? Mean all aspects of that is positive, right? Growth in the enterprise business generates free cash flow. The consumer business obviously generates significant free cash flow today.

It's sliding a little bit as subscribers shrink, but at the same time, we're not spending as much on subscriber acquisition costs. So we continue to generate cash from operations related to that. And it's always important balance that against new investments, not just S band, but other organic growth opportunities that we may want to invest in, other product enhancement acquisitions that we may want to look at. So all of that is in the mix. Certainly, don't look at it one dimensionally and we know we have to trade off one against the other.

And in the future, if we see huge opportunities in one area that we make significant investments in, it may result in us slowing the growth in some other areas. But it's all done with a lot of thought and a lot of analysis with the intent of long term growth of both revenue and cash flow and obviously shareholder value increase.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 0

You. We'll move on for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Chris Quilty from Quilty Analytics. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Thanks guys. Wanted to start off with a question regarding your OneWeb relationship. Obviously, you're supplying gateways to Eutelsat and you're supplying gateways to OneWeb. So you seem pretty well positioned there. Can you talk about the opportunity beyond gateways?

I think

Speaker 4

I

Speaker 7

heard you mention that you actually began shipping some CPE equipment to OneWeb. And if so, how would you size that opportunity?

Speaker 3

Pragman, I'll pass this question to you.

Speaker 4

Sure. Thanks. Yeah. You know, besides gateways, we're we're already supplying modems for the two user terminals at one web. So these modems are being supplied to manufacturers of the parabolic antenna user terminals that other manufacturers are making for them.

So every every user terminal will have our modem card in it. So that's number one. Number two, our program of developing the electro electronic scanning array is a very exciting program and we are, you know, in in in significant testing right now and expect that we will be able to start delivering production terminals next year. And that's a different ballgame once we get there because our we believe and our customers believe, just as Google did by signing a $180,000,000 contract, that we probably have one of the best ESAs in the market today. And so we are hopeful that a lot of the applications at OneWeb next year will use our RESA and should generate significant revenues for us in the next three to four years.

Speaker 7

Got you. Now I thought last quarter when you talked about the ESA, you were talking mainly about the IFC market and clearly you've got the announcement with Gogo. And I thought at the time you said, we're not supplying consumer terminals. So is this a new product? So you've got one for the IFC and now you have one for the consumer market?

Speaker 4

Yeah. No. We're we're we're not gonna supply and and neither is one where their plan doesn't have the consumer in mind because the cost of an ESA, it just doesn't make sense for the consumer market where you can, you know, generate an antenna cost of $40 or $50. You you just can't compete. So the intent here is to address mobility the mobility market, the airplane, ships, trucks, cars, you know, for the high end enterprise.

And so the idea there would be today, they have to use these domes domes parabolic antennas because there's no there's no ESA in the market that meets their requirement. But once we do that, then that becomes a different ballgame. And we we will then start supplying the user terminals using the ESA for all these other applications except the consumer, which one web and us are not addressing at this stage.

Speaker 7

Gotcha. Sorry. I said consumer, I meant for enterprise because clearly, OneWeb is focused on the enterprise market.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7

Can you deploy that in some of your sort of WiFi hotspot, you know, community service? Does the economics work in that sort of a scenario?

Speaker 4

Oh, absolutely. It'll it'll work and it'll work well. You know, it'll work great in there in planes. Any mobility kind of application, government is gonna be a big market For that, the US government, the British government, and a bunch of other governments as one web is, you know, already either signed contracts with or or the process of signing should be a big element. And then certain types of big enterprise customers where the economics will will work for an ESA.

Speaker 7

Gotcha. And

Speaker 4

I think So we're very excited. We think next year, we should be deploying them all over the globe.

Speaker 7

No. I think in Gogo's eight ks, they indicated 24, 25 sort of deployment. Is that just simply because of airing and FCC certifications that are you know, specific and much longer for the IFC market?

Speaker 4

Yeah. You know, the as you said, we we have to in order to fly a new piece of equipment, it has to go through a whole bunch of safety and, airing kind of tests to be done. And that just takes time.

Speaker 7

Understand. Question on the ESS business, know a small contribution, but the margins which had been in the 50s were up to kind of 60% in Q1 and then the 70% range in Q2. And yet I hear you talking about starting to ship some hardware. So I guess should we expect to see the margins correct down ten, twenty points or so as you actually begin to ship hardware. And I thought you said sort of full scale shipping perhaps later this year or early next year, but you did ship some to Ukraine, you indicated?

Speaker 3

Dave, if I may direct this to you in terms of the margin question?

Speaker 5

Yes. I'm not really sure I'm following you there, Chris, because you seem to reference ESS margin increases and then you went back to Hughes Equipment. So I'm not sure I understand the question.

Speaker 7

Well, in the 10 Q, you break out the ESS as both service and hardware, but there is has been no hardware up to this point, and I'm kind of referring to the EML business.

Speaker 5

Ah, okay. Yeah. The EML business is not and to be clear, EML is not part of ESS. EML is part of corporate and other.

Speaker 7

No, that wasn't obvious. But

Speaker 5

Okay. Sorry.

Speaker 7

Fair enough. So was there an underlying reason why the margins in ESS have gone up by 20 points?

Speaker 5

Yes. I mean part of it is a big piece of it is that we're actually starting to see some increase in revenue in that. And as you know, that revenue incrementally is almost 10090% margin. So as we grow that business even on a small basis, the margin increases significantly.

Speaker 7

Okay. And with the Fusion service again, how should we think about that in terms of the margin impact? If you're is it fair to assume you're basically going to be reselling terrestrial wireless service, which I'm assuming is going to be at a much lower margin contribution than your satellite broadband? And have you inked or I should say, how many carriers have you inked agreements with so that you can be able to provide that on a national basis?

Speaker 5

Yes, let me address the first part of that and I'll let Pradman address the second part. Yes, I mean from a pure margin percentage standpoint, you're going to see erosion. We would like to see the margin dollars stay relatively flat. That obviously there will be an upcharge for Fusion to offset that incremental LTE cost. But given that we haven't really introduced the product yet, we haven't seen the impact on the margins, but our expectations would be dollar margins flat, but the percentage margin obviously erodes a little bit because of it.

And I'll let Pradman answer second part.

Speaker 4

Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Dave. We have we have an agreement with one major wireless carrier right now, but it's not exclusive, and we're talking to everybody in the market right now.

Speaker 7

Understand. Oh, and the exclusive actually brings back a question regarding Gogo. In their eight ks, they indicate that they've got an exclusive on that business aviation product. Is there an and that seems to be a good decision since they dominate that market. But do you have plans for a version of that for the commercial aviation market?

Speaker 4

Not right now. We're focused on the the business aviation product. And as we get into the business next year, we'll we'll certainly look at the commercial aviation market. But today, our product is is focused purely on the on the business aviation.

Speaker 7

Okay. And one final question. This is a bit of a hypothetical. But, you know, recently, SpaceX made a filing for two gigahertz spectrum, specifically the spectrum that DISH currently holds on their what used to be called the TerraStar satellite here in North America. And I won't force you to guess what happens with that battle royale.

But I guess the question is the Echo 21 is in essence TerraStar two satellite that you operate in Europe. And if SpaceX were to get access to that spectrum, how does that impact you and your deployment plans of what you're doing in two gigahertz?

Speaker 3

Dean, if I may first direct this question to you and then I'll add comments at the end if necessary.

Speaker 2

Sure, Chris. Yes, we noticed the filing. Obviously, have an interest in the S band and do monitor filings there. It's we're still digesting it. It hasn't put it has not been put on public notice.

It's definitely something we intend to understand better. But at this point, don't have a view on that.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Deane.

Speaker 4

All

Speaker 7

right. Well, thank you. That's my questions for now.

Speaker 0

Thank you. One moment for our next question. We a follow-up from Rick Prentiss from Raymond James. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Thanks. Yeah, a couple of follow ups. I want to follow-up on one of Michael's questions earlier with the competitive dynamic. How do you see the WISPs, the wireless Internet service providers out there? Are they formidable, not formidable, something you're looking at?

Just trying to think of how they are playing into the competitive environment.

Speaker 3

Pratman, perhaps you can start this question.

Speaker 4

Sure. You know, we we view all competitors as formidable. We don't, you know, we don't think of anybody as as not being able to be formidable. But I think at this stage, they're not the major worry for us because the markets that they are serving are different from the markets that we are serving. And that's so we don't really run into them head on everywhere.

We do in some of the fringes, have some overlap markets, but but but not in a significant manner. From a competitive technology, obviously, a company like Starlink is is the is the competition we worry about the most. And, you know, and so we'll see how it develops over the next year or two.

Speaker 6

Okay. When you say the the WIPS are really a different market served, can you give us just kind of an example of something they would serve that you wouldn't or vice versa?

Speaker 4

Well, it's it's where the line is between number of subs per square distance. Mhmm. You know, we we go to at certain densities where we are very competitive and there's some more competitive than other densities. And, generally, the other element that comes comes into play, obviously, is the financing, the the capitalization of a lot of these risks risks is not, you know, is not the best in the world right now.

Speaker 7

Fair point.

Speaker 3

Yes. Mean, we get Scott, please.

Speaker 6

Yes. I'd say another question on kind of horizon one, two and three. As we think of Jupiter three coming in service then by the end of the first half twenty twenty three, What are you anticipating it will take to fill the Jupiter three? Ten years, five years, three years, less? I mean how fast are you anticipating you'll fill that burden?

Obviously that fits into Michael and my kind of competitive landscape questions as well.

Speaker 3

We have not completed that analysis, but the way we think of Horizons right now is that we are assuming that at least for the first two to three years of the operations of, Jupiter three, we do have a significant market advantage with an enormous capacity at a very, reasonable cost per bit and some new products that we are working on in that area. So at least for the two to three years, which we consider, you know, horizon two, we get we get an uplift in real nearly all of our financial metrics, top and bottom. And by then, you know, obviously, Jupiter three will continue to evolve and give us additional growth. But then our Horizon three kicks in. We are working on additional investment opportunities beyond, you know, Horizon two.

So we consider Horizon two to be about two to three years. Of course, you know, Jupiter three will continue to grow, but, you know, we expect you to have additional growth above and beyond that based on the things we're working on, which we consider Horizon three. I hope that answers the question

Speaker 6

Yeah.

Speaker 3

What you want to hear. Yeah.

Speaker 6

That does. And then another one for me is, as you think about what you've been looking at the landscape and how you think about Horizons one, two and three, any early indicators of what products or markets, geographies, anything that stands out that you could call out? Again, not looking for specific maybe name or identification, but just kind of thematic of what's coming out that you'd like to add to the future of what you guys could address, either organically Right. Or

Speaker 3

As I mentioned, it'd be difficult for us to disclose any of that because it's a work in progress and also some somewhat sensitive. From a from a competitive perspective, you really can't disclose much till you have made enough progress that it makes sense to to let the market know. But perhaps I can say that in Horizon two, you know, it's primarily organic, but there may be some tuck ins where in the enterprise business, we can increase additional density as opposed to scope. You know, our enterprise business is very wide and broad. We have we serve a very large set of products, and, you know, we might choose to go deeper on, you know, two or three categories of enterprise or verticals vertical, you know, offerings within the horizon within the enterprise business, which is very broad.

So maybe more of

Speaker 4

a tuck in

Speaker 3

invest acquisitions just to give us enough depth and density, but we're doing a lot of organic work as well. In horizon three, we clearly are looking at a much larger scale acquisitions or or investments. Obviously, our S band opportunity falls in that horizon three, as I mentioned. But we are certainly looking at, you know, what can be in the in in the periphery or adjacency of the space we serve that can come that could be synergistic with what we already have. So that takes us, you know, from our core, you know, to adjacent rings perhaps towards, you know, enterprise business where we can, you know, have a bigger play in terms of a addressable market yet remaining similar synergistic with what we already have.

So that's probably as as as as specific as I can be at this time, but we are hoping to share with you in the in the future release the, know, earnings calls in a much more specifics.

Speaker 6

Makes sense. And final question for me related. Any thoughts of the time frame you'd like to fill the CFO and or COO role? And were there any one timers in this quarter that I need to get he's gone?

Speaker 3

Well, the horizon is as soon as I can. So as I mentioned, we are we are in the search process right now. We have some qualified candidates. This is a position that I will absolutely take very, seriously, and and, it's it's an incredibly important position for our company, not only because, it it is generally an important position, but also we are in a company that we expect ourselves to remain in transition and new growth opportunities mode, both organically and inorganically. And, you know, certain depth and skill sets is required for that, and that that that that is something that is obviously not easy to find.

However, I do expect that, you know, within the within the within this, you know, this quarter, we will land on a a candidate. Again, that's you know, please allow us to, take our time and do the best job we can in terms of selecting, but I would like to do this to fill this position within the third quarter. Okay.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you. One moment for our next question. We have another follow-up from Quirce Quilty. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

So I should assume that, Dave's exit package is a, new set of golf clubs?

Speaker 5

No. That that's that's not correct, Chris. I'm hoping for a sleeve of balls.

Speaker 7

Okay. Well, I will leave with one final question for you, which is just any change on the CapEx forecast for this year? And then post Jupiter three launch and assuming you don't commit to a Jupiter four for India, what should we think about as sort of the steady state CapEx post launch?

Speaker 5

Yeah. On the second half of that, it's hard really to address that. Sort of from the status quo, you know, you're gonna have and by status quo, mean the existing business, not the Horizon two, the Horizon three initiatives, which could obviously change that CapEx mix. But in post launch of Jupiter three, what you're going to see is probably an increase in SAC, so consumer premise equipment, specifically on CapEx piece and a decline obviously on the satellite launch related costs associated with that. So it just depends on the how quickly we decide to grow that residential business or how much we take up that capacity into alternative uses, as Fragman described.

It's all about yield management. It's not about subscriber counts. But in terms of this year's CapEx, yeah, it's going be in the same range, probably in the $400,000,000 range for the full year.

Speaker 7

Very good. Thanks, and enjoy the retirement.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Chris.

Speaker 0

Thank you. And I'm not showing any further questions in the queue. I'll turn the call back over to Terry for any closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Okay. Thank you, operator, and thank you for everybody for joining the call today. And we'll look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Speaker 0

And this concludes the conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.