Viasat - Q1 2024
August 9, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Welcome to Viasat's FY 2024 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Your host for today's call is Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Dankberg.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Good. Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for joining on our call today. With me, I've got Guru Gowrappan, our President, Shawn Duffy, our Chief Financial Officer, and Robert Blair, our General Counsel. Before we start, Robert will give a safe harbor disclosure.
Robert Blair (Senior VP and General Counsel)
Thanks, Mark. As you know, this discussion will contain forward-looking statements. This is a reminder that factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Additional information concerning these factors is contained in our SEC filings, including our most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q. Copies are available from the SEC or from our website. Back to you, Mark.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
We encourage everybody to read the shareholder letter that we posted on our website earlier this afternoon. It'll have a lot more detail. We'll give an overview of the main points up front, and then we'll allow plenty of time for questions. The first quarter results were very good. The Inmarsat acquisition closed in May and contributed one month to our first quarter results. Year-over-year consolidated continuing revenue grew 36% to $780 million, and adjusted EBITDA grew 87% to $183 million, with good performance across the business. Viasat standalone revenues grew 12% and adjusted EBITDA grew 13% year-over-year. New awards and backlogs are good, and momentum has continued into the second quarter, especially in in-flight connectivity.
On a go-forward basis, we'll refer to consolidated and segment results for the combined company and adjust for continuing operations as appropriate. Post-merger, we're starting with a stronger than anticipated balance sheet and even stronger than what we expected when we closed the Tactical Data Links sale back in January. We're making good progress on the integration and are on track to achieve our overall synergy goals and aiming to improve on those. Also, I'd like to mention that Andy Sukawaty, who's formerly Inmarsat's Chairman, and Rajeev Suri, who was their Inmarsat CEO, joined the Viasat Board of Directors, and we're looking forward to their contributions. I'll start with a little more color on the ViaSat-3 Americas situation and our response. Shawn and Guru will add some color on financial results, operations, and our outlook, and then we'll go to the questions.
Last month, we reported an anomaly with a deployable antenna on ViaSat-3 Flight 1. Since then, we've been working with the antenna supplier and the satellite manufacturer to more fully assess the situation for the first flight and the implications for Flight 2. I'll discuss contingency plans in a minute, given those plans, I wanted to point out that we do not currently anticipate that fiscal year 2024 financial results will be significantly affected by Flight 1 performance. FY 2025 will be affected by the performance of Flight 1 and the timing of the corrective actions on Flight 2, given current information, we believe we will continue to grow in fiscal year 2025 as well, not to the same extent we would have without the anomaly.
While we're making steady progress, we expect that analyses that are underway to provide more definitive insight, and we'll provide updates when we have more information, which we currently estimate, will be when we report earnings next quarter. I'll give some additional color on the background of the antenna. The manufacturer is a major aerospace supplier with a decades-long history of successful space deployments. The antenna's from a product line with a history of 100% successful deployments on a number of missions, including five on Inmarsat satellites. The Flight One antenna was both partially and fully deployed with nominal results several times during manufacturing and testing. The Flight Two satellite uses the same antenna, but the Flight Three uses a completely different design from a different manufacturer, and that satellite is unaffected by the Flight One anomaly.
Flight 1 satellite is insured, and insurance is already placed on Flight 2. Inmarsat's prior standalone outlook had no dependence on ViaSat-3, of course, and we still do expect to capture revenue synergies with the ViaSat-3 fleet. We've got 4 main work streams underway. One is to work with the antenna manufacturer and our satellite supplier to determine the root cause of the reflector anomaly and the appropriate corrective actions for Flight 2. We have a plan to collect additional data and incorporate that into the deployment fault analysis. We also expect to have more information to report regarding corrective actions for Flight 2 and an update to the on schedule next quarter. Second is to assess the performance of the satellite with the antenna as it is.
Initial end-to-end measurements with the affected antenna indicate the rest of the satellite, including the innovative payload and ground infrastructure built by Viasat, are operating as expected or better. We have a plan for additional measurements that we expect will give us more definitive data on the throughput of the satellite, including the effects of the anomaly and the potential operational mitigations. We're targeting to provide an update on that next quarter also. Third is to assess the potential of improving the antenna deployment on Flight One. The outcome of this will depend on the results of the first two work streams. Again, we expect to provide an update next quarter.
Fourth is to mitigate the effects of the Flight One anomaly on our global mobility business, especially via optimizations of our existing fleet, optionality in the near and longer-term orbital locations of each of the ViaSat-3 satellites, and additional third-party capacity as required. These plans are already well underway, and we're confident we can continue to support our global mobility customers, as we do today and going forward. U.S. fixed broadband today represents about 13% of revenue, and that business will be the one that's primarily affected by the anomaly.
We'll be better able to assess that impact next quarter also. Importantly, for ViaSat-3 Flight 2 and Flight 3, our tests and measurements to date lend increased confidence to those parts of the ViaSat-3 system that are where the new innovations are. The launch schedule of Flight Three is unaffected. We'll provide an update on Flight Two, inclusive of corrective actions, as I mentioned, next quarter. The Inmarsat acquisition expands our in-orbit Ka-band fleet to a total of 13 Ka-band satellites, including Flight One and an I-6 Flight 2 satellite, which was launched earlier this year and is undergoing orbit raising.
We have eight more Ka-band satellites under construction, with five of those planned for launch before the end of calendar year 2025. We have a greater diversity of on-orbit technologies, and as we've previously discussed, an opportunity to substantially improve the capacity of our on-orbit fleet via ground network technology and optimizations. That was one of our objectives with the acquisition, and we believe we'll show the benefits associated with that through our resilience and growth in both the near and long-term time frames. With that, Shawn will go into some of the financials.
Shawn Duffy (Senior VP and CFO)
Thanks, Mark. Some brief color on the financials. Q1 revenue was $780 million. This was up 36% compared to the revenue from continuing operations of $575 million in Q1 of FY 2023. The result includes Inmarsat's one-month revenue contribution from the acquisition date of approximately $134 million. We estimate that the combined Viasat and Inmarsat revenue for the quarter, including the pre-acquisition period, would have been about $1.046 billion, an increase of about 11% year-over-year as both companies achieved double-digit revenue growth. Net loss totaled $77 million for the Q1, above the $40 million net loss in the year-ago period, due primarily to the non-recurring acquisition-related expenses, higher intangible amortization, and higher interest expense.
Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $183 million, an increase of 87% year-over-year from continuing operations. Q1 FY 2024 Adjusted EBITDA included a one month impact from Inmarsat of approximately $72 million. We estimate that the combined Viasat and Inmarsat Adjusted EBITDA for the full quarter, including the pre-acquisition period, would have been approximately $331 million, an increase of about 9% year-over-year. A little more color on Inmarsat. For the June quarter, we estimate revenues around $400 million and Adjusted EBITDA about $220 million, about a third of which is included in our consolidated results for the quarter. Inmarsat's revenue mix for the 12 months ended March 31st was 36% from government customers, 34% in maritime, 22% business and commercial aviation, and 8% enterprise and other.
That's a high-quality, diverse revenue base, which fits well with Viasat's business and our growth objectives in the mobility and government markets. Inmarsat's contribution has and will continue to be folded into our existing segments as follows: Government results will be included in our government systems segment and will be the individual largest revenue component in that segment, led by recurring SATCOM as a service revenue. Inmarsat maritime, aviation, and enterprise revenues will be included in our satellite service segment. As a result, mobility revenues will make up a strong majority of that segment's performance. Our commercial network segment will be focused on equipment sales as it is today, with no meaningful contribution from Inmarsat. You can find more complete review of our results in the shareholder letter we posted today.
We ended the quarter with over $2.1 billion of cash and short-term investments. We expect to maintain additional liquidity for a time, given tight credit markets, our maturity schedule, the low rates on our outstanding debt, and higher rates of return on the cash we hold in order to preserve the company's financial flexibility. We expect growth and the realization of synergies will improve our cash flow from operations over time. One last item: The debt we issued related to the financing of our Inmarsat transaction, approximately $1.35 billion, is currently held by the issuing banks. We'll provide marketing support for them when and if they choose to go to market. As a reminder, the interest rates on the debt are already set based on the original financing commitments from 2021 and will not be impacted by the transaction. With that, I'll pass it to you, Guru.
Guru Gowrappan (President)
Great. Thanks, Shawn. I will cover three key topics. One, double click on overall operational performance. Two, talk about our new combined company and exciting possibilities it opens up for us, and three, the combined outlook. Now, as you just heard from Shawn, financial results in Q1 were excellent, with healthy year-over-year growth across the businesses. Government Systems had another quarter of strong demand for our information assurance products, especially including our high-speed data center order. During the quarter, we earned an additional Type one certification for our next-generation ground-to-space encryption product. During the product quarter, we signed a AUD 187 million contract with Southern Positioning Augmentation Network to support improved satellite-based positioning and accuracy. In Satellite Services, U.S. fixed broadband revenue declined due to fewer residential subscribers, partially offset by higher ARPU, as we continue to reallocate bandwidth to rapid IFC growth and update to new service plans.
In Commercial IFC, in-service aircraft grew 18% year-on-year on a combined basis to 3,230 aircraft. Passenger usage also increased, driving up revenue per aircraft. At quarter-end, contracted backlog in Commercial IFC stands at approximately 1,600 aircraft. Momentum has continued at a pace to date in Q2, including additional new airlines and additional aircraft for existing customers. Inmarsat achieved 11% growth, year-over-year growth in Fleet Xpress vessels. We are excited about having greater diversity and scaled market outlets in global mobile broadband. In this quarter, we announced Fleet Reach Coastal LTE service, which is designed to augment uninterrupted high-speed broadband to merchant, offshore, energy, and fishing customers when sailing near the coast or docked in port. Commercial IFC equipment deliveries continued to be a strength this quarter and are reported in our Commercial segment.
Terminal deliveries are a good leading indicator of commercial IFC service growth and support our FY 2024 and FY 2025 outlooks. Overall, this was an excellent quarter with the closing of the acquisition, strong financial performance, and an important step forward. To the combined company. I would like to start by reminding everyone why we are so excited about the possibilities open to us as a combined company, and then I'll provide an update on where we are with the integration. Let's review why this transaction is so compelling strategically. First, it accelerates our global mobility and government strategy. This strategy is focused on the best and fastest-growing markets, including aviation, government mobility services, maritime, land mobile, and enterprise. Second, Inmarsat brings global Ka- and L-band coverage with a robust satellite launch roadmap that both augments coverage and adds resilience and redundancy.
We are excited by future upside from valuable L-band spectrum assets, including the IoT and direct-to-device opportunities. Third, Inmarsat's well-established business greatly enhances our global distribution. The combined company has a large installed base of existing customers across a broader portfolio of markets and products that will provide greater overall resilience to our financial performance. This is also a compelling financial combination. We both have strong businesses today, but together, we are enhancing our future free cash flow. That's supported by an estimated $1.5 billion in synergies on a post-tax NPV basis. Now, we intend to be aggressive, considering all options open to us as we build a business that focuses on markets where we can win and scale cost effectively. In terms of revenue, we're already seeing revenue synergies take form across key business units such as government, aviation, and maritime.
In terms of cost efficiencies, we are focused on achieving and accelerating our targeted cost synergies. In FY 2025, we expect to achieve about half of the forecasted $80 million in annual cost synergies. CapEx synergies remain a key lever for value creation as well. We are targeting $110 million annually a few years out. Behind the actual numbers, we are integrating capabilities with an eye to being the best of the best from the perspectives of people, business processes, and our partner and supplier ecosystem. I should add here that culturally, we've already seen the two companies are a great fit, and that's very important. We recently formalized our go-forward leadership team. It's focused on scale, capturing the benefits of our technology, and furthering enhancing the measurable value we deliver for our customers.
We are committed to delivering a successfully integrated operating model while continuing to maintain momentum and delivering value to our customers and shareholders. We are excited by the many opportunities ahead. We think it is important to spend this time to communicate how we view the significance of this combination and how that informs our diligent approach to integration. Now, moving to combined outlook. I'll wrap up with a high-level summary of our financial outlook. There's more on this in the shareholder letter as well. For FY 2024, we expect revenue growth in the high single-digit % for the combined companies relative to pro forma view of both for FY 2023.
A simple view of expected FY 2024 adjusted EBITDA can be approximated by adding Viasat standalone prior expectations of high single-digit to low double-digit growth for full year FY 2024, adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations to approximately 10 months of Inmarsat contributions, which we expect will grow slightly throughout the fiscal year. We expect growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA for FY 2025, including assuming a full year contribution from Inmarsat for FY 2024. Our expectations are supported by our healthy backlog and strong orders. We do anticipate that FY 2025 growth rate will be affected by the ViaSat-3 F1 anomaly, especially by the fixed broadband business, where growth will be delayed. That's currently about 13% of our revenue, and we anticipate growth in rest of the business as it is not directly affected, and that is 87% of our business.
Our positive free cash flow inflection point is targeted to occur in the second half of calendar 2025. Lastly, our plan is to hold an investor day before the end of our fiscal year, so we can share more details of our plans with you. There you have it. We had a strong operational performance in Q1. We are on track to deliver very material synergy value, and we expect the combined company to grow revenue and adjusted EBITDA in FY 2024 and FY 2025, while creating a powerful global mobility and government leader.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Good. Thanks, Guru. With that, we'll be happy to take questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from Simon Flannery, Morgan Stanley.
Simon Flannery (Managing Director)
Great. Thank you very much, and thanks for all of the information. It sounds like you haven't yet determined whether the Flight 1 is a total loss or not. Maybe we can just assume if, if the worst happens, what would be the timing of collecting the $420 million? What's the hurdles you have to go through to get that? And what would your mitigation strategy be? I think you've talked before about perhaps repositioning F2. What about ordering an F4 satellite? How much would that cost? What sort of timeframe would you put around that?
Shawn Duffy (Senior VP and CFO)
Hey, Simon, this is Shawn. I can take your first question on the insurance. I mean, clearly, we're still. It's really, really early in the process. You know, we had a lot of success in, in our, in the timing of our prior collections on, on ViaSat-2, you know, but I think that, you know, it's hard to speculate when, when that would happen right now. You know, I think that, you know, things are, things are early in the process to make a speculation around timing.
Simon Flannery (Managing Director)
Was that about 18 months or something like that before?
Shawn Duffy (Senior VP and CFO)
It was, yeah, I think it was a little shorter of that, to be honest. It was a little inside of, around the 12-ish mark.
Simon Flannery (Managing Director)
Okay.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Then in terms of some of the other questions that you asked, the, you know, we don't want to put out any, any, assessments or statements of what we think the capacity will or won't be, including going down to zero, without having, without having more facts. I think we do have plans that cover, kind of, all the things that you ask, but obviously, you know, what we would do for a, you know, as an example, what we'll do for a replacement satellite depends a lot on what the performance of this, of this one is. We, we expect to be able to take measurements on that. We...
As I mentioned, we have been able to get end-to-end, measurements through the satellite so that, you know, that's where we're starting from, is to, is to quantify those. It's, don't really want to speculate, but we do have, we do have, you know, plans that range from what we would do if we got very little or no capacity, to what we would do if it turns out to be, you know, to be more, more closer to what we originally expected. I, and I think we won't, so some of those, to the extent that some of the plans, involve, you know, forks in the road, we're not going to go through a fork in the road without having the data that supports it.
Simon Flannery (Managing Director)
Understood. You've already called out the impact on the consumer broadband business. What happens to the IFC business? Sounds like that's still growing rapidly. Are, are you going to have to, you know, work with the airlines to mitigate some of the, you know, their, their demand as they bring the planes on, or do you think you can handle the backlog as it comes on with, without, the, the new satellite?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
We, we can handle the backlog, you know, at least for, for some period of time. We can handle all the backlog that we have. Not all of it depends on, on, on this particular satellite. You know, the main thing we've been doing to handle our backlog so far is transferring business, transferring bandwidth from the fixed applications to the mobility business. We have that going for us. We also mentioned we have now we have a lot more additional maneuvering room using some of the Inmarsat fleet. We have the potential to relocate satellites. We're not going to make premature judgments on what we need to do until we get the data that supports it. We're, we're that, that'll be completely fine for our mobility businesses. you know, actually for an indefinite period, but certainly for the period of time it will take us to figure that out.
Simon Flannery (Managing Director)
Great. Thanks a lot, Mark.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Thanks, Simon.
Operator (participant)
Next up, we'll hear from Mike Crawford, B. Riley Securities.
Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director)
Thank you. If the ViaSat-3 Americas Flight 1 is a total loss, isn't it likely that the satellite that you've been expecting to put up over Europe, that it would make most sense to put it over North America first until you could get another satellite up, and then you can move that satellite over to its European or EMEA slot?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. Okay. Yes, yes, that is a possibility. I think that, you know, from our perspective, we will move satellites in a way that gives us the best shot at serving, you know, our customers, all of our customers' demands. We have the flexibility to do that. It would be premature to, to jump to an operational scenario that assumes that the satellite has no, you know, has, has no utility. What we are trying to do is we're trying to work through the financial scenarios that, that take that into account, but that's different than what, than what the operational scenarios would be, 'cause we, we have more time to work on those. Until we'll get the data for it, and then we'll, we'll make decisions.
Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director)
Just maybe one more on that front, if you don't mind. I, the APAC satellite's configured differently with a different antenna, so that, pretty much that one, I would imagine, is going up over APAC regardless. Then you've also been developing your ViaSat-4 payload, so wouldn't it make sense to maybe take some of those features to have, like, a, you know, a ViaSat-3.1 come up over Americas eventually after these Flight 2 and Flight 3 satellites?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Okay, so just to be clear, any of the satellites can operate effectively in any of the orbital locations, so that does give us more flexibility. There's additional operational flexibility that's built into the Flight three satellite. That works in Asia-Pacific, but it also works in other areas. I don't want to imply that we've made any decisions on that, because we want to get the data before we make the decisions. On the ViaSat-4, there are some significant improvements there that we could use as the foundation for a replacement satellite.
Again, what we do there will depend a lot on what we measure and analyze in the near term. I think that's the main thing I would encourage investors to think through, is that we're gonna make a sound, methodical decision with real data. We'll be able to get the data, and it'll be a lot more clear. I know everybody wants to know quickly, but knowing there's no consequences to us taking, you know, another couple, three months to get good measurements and then making those decisions.
Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director)
Okay, thank you. That makes sense. Then just a completely unrelated quick question. With that $4.8 billion of unawarded IDIQ that's not in your government systems backlog, I know where in the past you've had a single award contract, you've been able to realize most of that, but is there, Can you break down how much of that might be single award versus multi-award, where you're competing against others?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
No, there's a diversity of those. It's I don't think. Maybe we might get back to you on a little bit more of a split there. You, you're right about that, is that some of those IDIQ contracts, a fair number of them, are for you know, they're, they're a broad range of services, but they're pretty well-contemplated services or products that we would, you know, that are unique to us. Others are more like, more like with a broad agency announcement, where there are multiple bidders, and the allocation of the awards are less, are less certain. I don't think it'd be. I don't think we can give you a good breakdown of that right now on this call.
Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director)
Okay. Well, thank you, Mark.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Thanks, Mike.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Chris Quilty, Quilty Analytics.
Chris Quilty (Founder and Partner)
Great. The guy from Quilty Analytics is gonna go against form. I actually got a question about the government business, which is, I mean, good numbers here on the quarter and good order flow. You know, just at the high level, as you look out over the next 12 months in that business line, you know, what are the things that you think of as the worry case of continuing resolution to upside scenarios that overall, when we think about the outlook there?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Oh, boy. It's hard to tie it to some of these macro trends. We will know more, you know, by. There's generally a lot of activity, you know, right around the end of the government fiscal year, so that'll give us more insight. Some of the things that we're doing are, you know, for instance, like one of the growth areas that we this quarter, and it came up better than we expected, was for high-speed data center crypto appliances. You know, there, one of the things you can look at is just how much interest there is in AI and big data processing.
You know, for government applications, if that occurs in classified levels, of course, that's going to drive some of the, some of, you know, drive the demand for the types of products that we provide. Some of those things, besides just the way the budget is determined, one of the factors will be how our customers decide to use their budget. In things like these information assurance appliances, we have a lot more maneuvering room, right? I mean, because they can make, they can make decisions.
The other, you know, the other thing is that we do have a lot, and this is part of what we're aiming for, with a lot more of our government revenues and recurring services revenue. Those are, you know, much more predictable than, say, say, individual contracts, whose timing might be affected by some of the budget realities. You know, that's one of our objectives, is, is we like those types of revenues, which, which can change over several years, but are less subject to some of these, kind of more, short-term budget nuances. Does that, does that get?
Chris Quilty (Founder and Partner)
Okay.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
the things you were asking about?
Chris Quilty (Founder and Partner)
Yeah, and just a quick follow-on to that, have you now identified what sort of synergies you see between the Inmarsat government side and on the Viasat?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
We're. Yeah, I'd say we because of the nature of some of the contracts we have, it takes a little while for us to get the details across, across there. We're get. Yeah, we're getting more and more exposure to that, and obviously, there's a bunch of similar. There's a bunch of we have similar applications for similar but different customers, and opportunities to extend things like geographic coverage areas or types of services or technology, equipment across those customer bases. Those are the things we're looking at. I don't think we have. We, and we have identified, you know these revenue synergy opportunities in the government area, as well as in the aviation area and starting to in the maritime area. It we're not gonna give any specifics yet. I think we'll be able to comment more on specific values, you know, in the next couple quarters or so.
Chris Quilty (Founder and Partner)
Gotcha. If I can totally switch gears, the, the IFC business, you've had tons of customer wins, both domestically here, some big international deals, some of which I'm assuming were predicated on capacity that those customers were expecting. Are there any, you know, new customers? Southwest is a big win. I don't know how far they are in that process, that, you know, you're feeling pushback from those customers around how you're gonna transition and provide the capacity needed.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
The, you know, the approach that we've been taking in the aviation business, which has been very successful for us, is to provide very specific service level agreements that are end-to-end for their route system. When we take on new customers, you know, we look at their plane fleet, their routes, we look at the airports that they're serving, and we show them, "Here's the service level agreement that we can deliver, and here's why, how we know we can deliver that." We're going through the, you know, I think that's kind of what is happening, is we're going through all those details again with our customers in light of the ViaSat-3 scenario.
They're, you know, Yes, their, you know, their initial question is: "Okay, can you still serve the planes that we have in the routes that we have, going forward?" So far, you know, that's gone, I'd say, quite well, because we do have the resources to, to deal with the customers that we have. We may have. In some cases, we may end up with slightly different or somewhat different service level agreements for some routes or some portions of some routes. Those, those we're going through with specific customers. Overall, I'd say that the qualitative perception's been really good because it's based on the approach that we've used.
They understand the benefit of having a larger fleet. The other thing that we, we did kind of mention is, you know, for going into the second quarter, a large amount of which is since we, we did disclose the anomaly on Viasat, on, on Flight 1, our order flow is still been really good. That order flow includes both new airlines in different geographic regions as well as existing airlines. From, you know, off taking, placing orders for new aircraft as well.
The, the large majority, think of it as what, if you think about it as two, as the two different businesses, the Viasat's business, the legacy Viasat portion, was heavily North American-oriented, and we have plenty of resources to serve that. We've been able to demonstrate that to customers, whether they're new line-fit aircraft or retrofits. The Inmarsat order book tended to be more international, but none of their service level agreements depended on ViaSat-3. Both of those are still proceeding.
Chris Quilty (Founder and Partner)
If it's pretty clear, given where, you know, most of your customers' orders are, that the next new capacity has to go to North America, whether that's the next ViaSat-3 launch, or I think it's the GX7, you know, the next Inmarsat. You know, short of that, I mean, it, it's best case scenario, 1 year, or depending on the strategy, you know, 3 years, if you build something new. If you have to burn down, and you've been burning down a lot of the consumer subs, do you hit a point where, you know, at 1 year to 2 years out, it's just not worth trying to scale in that business?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
No. The short, the short answer to that is no. Remember the things that we've been emphasizing, I think our airline customers do understand more than, you know, I mean, to a great extent, because they're so logistics-focused. What really matters is not just the amount of bandwidth we have, but where we have it. That's what we're doing, is we are, you know, we, we have the route maps. Of course, you know, we take into account that the routes aren't 100% deterministic. They take different routes depending on weather, the schedule issues at times. What we build a demand map from that, and then we work on supply. For supply, we, you know, one of the good things, if...
think of it as, as this way, is that, if you, if the real problem is reinforcing the areas with the highest demand, then when we add multiple satellites across the fleet, that gives us a lot of maneuvering room for reinforcing the high-demand areas. What we are doing, you know, and we had already, and we, we mentioned this before, we'd already done, partly because there were concerns about additional schedule delays, is we do have agreements with partner operators to reinforce both North America, you know, in some of the ocean crossing routes and in other, the other high-demand areas.
We already had some of those agreements. We'll probably, you know, execute those, and then we have our other tools. I wouldn't, the one thing I, I wouldn't say is what we're talking about financially, what's our outlook without Flight One. That's not the same as saying we won't have Flight One. I think, again, the, the fact that we can communicate through it is, is helpful, but I don't want to make any, any assertions about what capacity will be until we get more hard data. We'll be able to do that in November.
Chris Quilty (Founder and Partner)
Gotcha. On that note I guess maybe I say my condolences. It, it just sucks. You guys have worked hard at this, been innovative, and to have that kind of binary outcome on a component, just, it sucks.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Thanks. Appreciate that. We're working through it.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from Ric Prentiss, Raymond James.
Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)
Yeah. Good afternoon, everybody.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Hey, Ric.
Chris Quilty (Founder and Partner)
Hey.
Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)
It's been a busy earnings day, earnings season. Seems like we've built a year of this last week. A couple questions, if I could. I'll echo Chris's comments, but maybe not use some four-letter words, but just say, clearly disappointing, the, the anomaly, and glad you're working through it. I might have missed this, but did you talk about the review process of what this is doing to Flight Two's timeframe? I would assume you want to make sure everything's good, but when should we expect Flight Two would be going up?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. One of the work streams that I did mention is really, the antenna manufacturer is the most knowledgeable. They're the ones that are leading the root cause analysis. We're participating, the spacecraft manufacturer's participating. We are still collecting and analyzing data to get to the root cause. We think we will have more insight into the corrective actions based on our root cause analysis, probably by next quarter. Those corrective actions will, that's what will determine, help us determine when the launch date is for the next satellite. It's a good...
Again, we shouldn't speculate on what they will be, but I'm sure you can imagine that the, the corrective actions can range from benign to more complex, and there's no basis to, to choose one, any one timeframe over another without the data from the root cause analysis, which is, it's underway. There's a schedule for it, and we'll be able to report more about the timeframe of the Flight 2 launch, soon quarter. It was, you know, it was pretty close to being able to launch, when we had this antenna anomaly.
Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)
Right.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
that probably the corrective actions for the antenna will be the, the, the main factor in determining when the, the new launch date is.
Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)
Okay. I, if I remember, or maybe remind us previously, the path to pre-positive free cash flow was gonna be certain, was it 6 months after ViaSat-3 Flight 2 was up? What, what was kind of the previous thought of when free cash flow positive was gonna be?
Shawn Duffy (Senior VP and CFO)
Hey, Ric, this is Shawn. I think what we had earlier was kind of in that, you know, spring/earlier 2025. You know, we're still shooting to be in 2025, but probably in the back half.
Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)
Right. Okay. Excuse me if you've already provided, but did you provide some CapEx guidance? I, I know you had Viasat was separate, you had Inmarsat, you had to bring them all together. You had to figure out what the, the arrangements were gonna be. How should we think about CapEx over the next, this fiscal year and next fiscal year, at least?
Shawn Duffy (Senior VP and CFO)
On the, on the CapEx side, I think, you know, first, yeah, we have only one month this quarter. You need to think about, you know, having a full set of three months for Inmarsat for the, you know, rest of each of the quarters of this year. Probably a good way to think about the rest of this year is that it's, you know, $1.3 billion-$1.4 billion to kind of close out for both companies for the next kind of nine months. Then if you think about next year, I would say we could see that, you know, coming down a bit, you know, year-over-year relative to this year.
Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)
Okay. Obviously, one of the big events in our universe was the DISH buying EchoStar. Couple of questions there. Is that an asset you would have been interested in or were shown? Part of what they talked to on the DISH EchoStar call was the excitement about both direct-to-device, but also private 5G networks. If you could maybe expound on that.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
I'm gonna pass I'm gonna pass on the first question about acquiring them.
Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)
I tried.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. On the direct-to-device part, we have talked about that. We are optimistic about that. We are, we're working it from a number of different perspectives, including, you know, how, how we evolve the business from really using you know, using L-band for specialized satellite devices, and we don't think that goes away. What do we need to do to our systems to really make the direct-to-device business scale? We think that's both an interesting, technical problem and one that we think we're, we're really well suited to, to deal with.
The other implication, the other thing that I think people should keep in mind is, you know, in order to be able to close to provide good service to off-the-shelf cell phones or smartwatches or the, the types of devices that people are putting in that direct-to-device category, you'll need a lot more throughput, effective throughput from the satellites, which will also greatly, we think, enhance the demand for, for more specialized mobile satellite services.
Because we'll be able to deliver a lot higher speeds and more bandwidth into still very small terminals, but with antennas that are, you know, still, you know, still, I mean, like, you look at a normal sat phone, that's not a big device, but the antenna, the satellite antenna on that device is, can be as much as, you know, 5 to 10 times better than, than a, a conventional cell phone. That creates opportunities. And what we're looking to do as this direct-to-device business matures, we wanna be able to still use the space system assets we have and all the capital we invest to then monetize that through these other, other markets that we're really familiar with. Yeah, the short answer is, we, we think it's a really big opportunity. I think the...
You know, then you get into the details, and we do think it's gonna play out over several years, but we think the, the end state is really attractive, and we think that, that the, both the assets, resources, and technology we have will help us be successful there and I also don't think, you know, I mean, personally, I know people wanna always position these things as sort of winner take all. I think that in order for the business to really be scalable, there, there's gonna be an opportunity for certain types of standards that will, you know, that I think operators that can work within those standards, deliver space systems that work well with them, ground technology that uses them. I think all that stuff will play into, you know, it, it being a big sector, not just a win for one individual operator.
Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)
Okay. Makes sense. We'll stay tuned. Everyone, stay well.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Thank you, Ric. You, too.
Operator (participant)
We'll go to Ryan Koontz, Needham & Company.
Ryan Koontz (Managing Director)
Thanks. I wanted to ask about the core maritime business at Inmarsat, obviously, that's been a long time legacy strength of theirs. Ask about the competitive environment, if that's changing at all. Seems to me there's lower barriers to entry from the LEOs and Starlink, I, I hear about some progress from them in the maritime area. Any insights you can share in that space would be great. Appreciate it.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Yes. I think, yeah, the maritime space is changing. I think a lot of that is because the entry barriers are low. The thing, you know, and this is actually a big part of what we're doing across the mobility businesses, and part of what we think makes the mobility businesses interesting, is if you look at it from the perspective of geographically, where is the demand? Then what type of, what type of service are different segments of the maritime market looking for? That's where the opportunities lie. The big issue is, you know, we have spoken over and over on the in-flight space, that the real problem for airlines especially, these are, you know, enterprise users who need to provide a predictable level of service.
The big problem is not connecting an individual plane in flight, it's providing a predictable level of service in the places where the airlines congregate, which is especially hubs, right. The airport hubs. What we are seeing in the maritime space is unsurprisingly congestion in major ports, where the places where people are trying these LEO systems especially early on. Now a lot of that are things like leisure boats, where you're dealing with an individual that may use a ship sporadically or occasionally
And where connectivity is nice to have, but it's not operationally important to the, you know, to the mission of those ships. That's that those areas are the areas where ships are looking for end-to-end service level agreements at a predictable level, and where you're already seeing congestion on some of these on the LEO systems. There's a real opportunity for us to both improve our services and to make them more enduring, and that's where we're focused. It's a different segment of the maritime business.
Ryan Koontz (Managing Director)
Sure, that's really helpful. Thanks, Mark.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
That can I mean, while Inmarsat has has maritime customers across multiple segments, that's the segment that really is been the one that they've grown on the most. I think that's the one where we have the best opportunity to show what we can do.
Ryan Koontz (Managing Director)
Got it. Thank you.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Thanks, Ryan.
Operator (participant)
Our last question today comes from Louie DiPalma, William Blair.
Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)
Mark, Guru, Sean, and, and Peter, good afternoon.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Hey, Louie.
Guru Gowrappan (President)
Hey, Louie.
Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)
On the government defense side, there's been a lot of publicity regarding how the Ukraine war and geopolitical tension in Asia has triggered some robust demand for, for Starlink as, as a backup or even a, a primary source of defense connectivity. Has the Ukraine war also led to a, a surge in demand for, for Inmarsat's Ka-band services?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
I think, unlike others, I don't think we're going to go into great depth about what we're doing in, you know, specific defense communications. You just read the newspapers, and one of the things you can see is that there's concern on multiple fronts about being overly dependent on single sources of, of connectivity for various reasons. I think a number of satellite operators are seeing demand, and different operators are somewhat uniquely positioned to, to, you know, serve different elements of that demand. You could put us in that group.
Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. On, along different lines, Mark, Ligado was recently in the news regarding potential restructuring. Can you discuss the status of your and Inmarsat's relationship with Ligado? Is there the potential that Ligado could begin again making large payments to Inmarsat?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Okay. You know, Viasat and Inmarsat, each have had a relationship with Ligado for quite a while, but in different domains. You know, the, the Inmarsat relationship was really around spectrum, and our relationship has been more around operational performance using their satellite. I think what we're trying to do is bring those two things together. It's really gonna be up to Ligado to determine, you know, how they want to proceed. I mean, not on their own, but, you know, we're in discussions with Ligado about how best to proceed on both of those fronts.
It's, you know, Some of that depends on decisions that Ligado makes, as well as choices that we make. It's a little early to tell. They, you know, they've expressed. I think one of the things that Ligado has expressed is interest in, in the long-term satellite business, you know, more, more than they have in the past. That, that's a basis for further discussions. It's just too early for us to comment on what the outcome of those discussions will be.
Guru Gowrappan (President)
The, the one piece, Mark Dankberg, to add in, Louie DiPalma, this is Guru Gowrappan. I would say we have excluded Ligado from our financial models. Any payments or returned spectrum would be an upside. We've not included that in our models.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, Guru. That's been our position all along, since we announced the acquisition. Thanks.
Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. One final one for Mark. What is the process to make existing Viasat in-flight connectivity systems for your, like, North American airline customers interoperable with the Inmarsat network that also has coverage over North America?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Okay. It's a little bit, it's a little bit of a nuanced problem. Think of it as one of the ways to start with, and, and, and we can build on this, is that both fleet can support both, either network pretty straightforwardly. Think of it as the, the, I think that's, you know, there's a, there's a little bit of a nuance for part of our fleet, and, and it becomes a little more, yeah, it's a little bit of a nuance for part of our fleet. Basically, that, we can make and you can, and you've seen this, for instance, with Inmarsat, where Inmarsat has used third-party satellites.
We've used third-party satellites, and what that speaks to is just the ability to adapt the networks to other satellites. For some of the specific satellites, but not all, it's a little more complicated to do both, networks at the same time in exactly the same place. There's lots of places where we can do that as well. Think of I mean, the simplest way to think about it is that the, this, because they're not on, they're not, you know, other than one, one special case, they're not really onboard process satellites.
Satellites are just repeaters, so there is, from a basic interoperability perspective, we can run, you know, our network, and Inmarsat can run their network over third-party satellites, including each other's, or including different parts of each other's as we need to. The last piece is to be able to do, to do pretty much exact, you know, to use both of them at exactly the same place at exactly the same time. While we can do that, in some cases, not all. That's the last piece. Does that, does that get to what you're asking about? Does that, that cover the question you're asking?
Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)
Yes. For, yeah, Mark, for your existing North America customers, such as JetBlue, United, American Airlines, Delta, you've discussed how you need to add a certain amount of capacity to make up for the loss of ViaSat-3. I was wondering if the Inmarsat capacity over North America can be one of those sources of capacity and, like, for the-
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Yes.
Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)
aircraft that are being, you know, line-fit now, like, have you already done the work to make the, the antenna, like, interoperable with both, both networks?
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. There are, so there are a couple of nuances that apply to specific airplanes, you know, some depending on the age of those airplanes. Well, the, not so much the airplane, it's the equipment that's on the airplane. There are. What I'm going to describe isn't true across the board, but it's largely true, and it's especially more true for the newer equipment that we're deploying and the newer satellites that, that Inmarsat is deploying. Yes, the short answer is, we already have, there's already Inmarsat capacity centered over the Americas that covers North and South America, and the oceans to the east and west.
Think of it as going back to the answer that I gave before to Chris Quilty. You know, when we, when we want to add airplanes to our service or our customers want to improve the service level agreement to our service, it doesn't mean that we need bandwidth everywhere. We need it in the places where we can forecast, what the demand would be. So we can draw on the Inmarsat fleet to solve a lot of that problem for us. Does that, does that-
Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)
Excellent. That, that makes sense. Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, Mark, and Guru, Shawn, and, and Peter. Take care.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Thank you.
Guru Gowrappan (President)
Thank you.
Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst)
Good, good luck with the ViaSat-3 investigation.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Thank you. Appreciate that. We'll give an update in the next quarter.
Operator (participant)
Everyone, that does conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to hand the call back to Mr. Mark Dankberg for any additional or closing remarks.
Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)
Good. Thanks. So again, thanks again for joining us this afternoon. I would like to leave you with three important takeaways. So one, we had a really good first quarter, strong financial performance. A lot of that, you know, was, is based, based on the specific businesses that we're in and the backlog that we had. We expect to continue to grow revenue and adjusted EBITDA both this year and next year, even, even if we make a, a very conservative assumption about, you know, no contribution from ViaSat-1. That's not the same. Just to be clear, that's not the same as a prediction about what, I mean, ViaSat-3, ViaSat-1. That's not the same as a prediction of what the ViaSat-3, ViaSat-1 satellite will do. You know, we do have a great long-term opportunity to create a lot of value.
We can build on market-leading positions in these growing global mobility and government services markets for both broadband and the mobile device market. We've got material synergy opportunities that we're executing on, and we like building a diverse and resilient financial profile, and it does bring strong free cash flow potential with it. With that, we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter, and I'll hand it back to the operator. Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Once again, everyone, that does conclude today's conference. We would like to thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.