Viasat - Q2 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone. Welcome to Viasat's FY 2024 second quarter earnings conference call. Your host for today is Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Dankberg.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for joining us today. With me, I've got Guru Gowrappan, our President, Shawn Duffy, our Chief Financial Officer, and Robert Blair, our General Counsel. Robert, could you please start us with our safe harbor disclosure?

Robert Blair (General Counsel)

Sure, 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)

Okay, thanks. We encourage reading the shareholder letter that we posted to our website earlier this afternoon for more details. I'll start with an overview of the main points, and then we'll allow time for questions. Our main objective today is to bring you up to date, organize it, some information, and provide clarity on our plans. I'll start with a quick update on performance in the quarter, which was really good. Overall, up well into double digits on revenue and Adjusted EBITDA on a combined operating basis. I'll give an update on the status of the two satellite anomalies, lay out the financial implications of putting those behind us, and describe the go-forward plan.

And then I'll give a quick reminder of our overall strategy and why we're well positioned for growth, primarily in the $108 billion market for commercial and government global mobility. So, after that, Guru will go into more depth on the quarter with business highlights and financial results, give a little bit more color on the Inmarsat integration, and give an update on our fiscal year 2024 and 2025 growth outlook. Just for context, at the beginning, we have a good track record of identifying and building profitable and enduring positions in a succession of specific, somewhat esoteric market segments, including against much larger competitors.

I think the sale of the Tactical Data Links business earlier this year to a leading aerospace and defense company for about $2 billion, it's indicative of our ability to build long-term value while also transforming target market segments. We've been targeting global mobile broadband for over a decade, and we've had a big impact on the commercial in-flight connectivity market in the U.S. We aim to leverage our technology and domain knowledge and the extensive operational data that we've accumulated, along with Inmarsat's heritage, to lead specific segments of this rapidly growing market for commercial and government global mobile. We can do it by focusing on quantitative performance metrics that are critical to our customers and bringing together the assets, skills, and ecosystems needed to win on those metrics. Our financial performance in the second quarter demonstrates strength in global mobility.

Core operating financial results were good across the business, both at Viasat and legacy Inmarsat. Excluding the one-time benefit of a legal settlement, operating revenue was up 16% year-over-year on a combined basis. And then excluding that one-time litigation benefit and the satellite impairment charges, operating adjusted EBITDA was up 20%. Our aviation business continues steady growth. Our customers' fleet of planes is up to 3,350 and still growing. Passenger engagement is growing, and we've got a robust pipeline of new orders. Information assurance products for secure government data centers and antenna systems are also growing very well. Maritime is growing modestly, and we see opportunities to build momentum there. Our outlook is also quite good.

We anticipate continued growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA during fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025, and to reach free cash flow positive in the first half of calendar 2025. So go on to the satellite anomalies. Those on ViaSat-3 Flight one and Inmarsat-6 Flight two this summer were two totally different events, and they were setbacks, but we have plans to deal with each. The I-6 F2 will result in a total write-off. A claim for about $349 million will be submitted to insurers shortly. I-6 F2's near-term contribution to revenue was expected to be small. It was part of a longer-term planned evolution of Inmarsat's redundant global L-band coverage to a newer generation of satellites. We have a provision in our updated capital budget to replace that mission of I-6 F2 in a timely manner.

ViaSat-3 Flight one is impaired, and as we disclosed recently, we expect it will have less than 10% of nominal total throughput. We expect to file an insurance claim this calendar year for about $421 million. The anomaly affected what's called a feeder link antenna. The rest of the satellite has operated nominally or better to date. Our focus has been on characterizing the affected antenna so we can compensate for the anomaly optimally. We've made a lot of progress there. The satellite system is software-defined on the ground, which gives us a lot more tools that we can use. We can use them to optimize available throughput for global mobility, especially by dynamically steering coverage beams on moving airplanes and ships, and to the busiest airports, seaports, or wherever there's instantaneous demand is greatest.

We also can effectively increase the capacity of our other satellites in our fleet for global mobility by the way we use each of the ViaSat-3s, including Flight one. Our fixed U.S. business, though, depends more on the volume of bandwidth than on dynamic beam steering, so we expect it will decline until we launch and position the next ViaSat-3. We expect to grow in fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 nonetheless, driven by the backlog and outlook in global mobility and government. ViaSat-3, Flight three, has a launch contract now for the fourth quarter of calendar 2024, about a year from now. Either ViaSat-3, Flight two, or Flight three would replace Flight One over the Americas, and then Flight one would be relocated. A report on the Flight one antenna root cause, and then the corrective actions for Flight two from the antenna manufacturer is planned for next week.

The Flight two satellite is awaiting corrective actions to the feeder antenna and then integration with the completed spacecraft. So we'll give an update on that schedule next quarter. The other satellite update is that we don't anticipate additional material investment in ViaSat-4, and we've written down that asset. It was designed prior to the Inmarsat acquisition, when fixed services were a higher priority. Given the timing on the ViaSat-3s and our focus on mobility, its need date is farther out than originally planned, so deferring capital investment now saves several hundred to millions of dollars in the near term. It accelerates our free cash flow generation, and it improves profitability. We expect that key technology work that was performed on ViaSat-4 will apply to a future broadband satellite that'll deliver better returns in mobility applications.

The end result is a write-off of the three satellite assets of about $900 million, net of insurance. The schedule for Flight one, remember, the build schedule for Flight one was much longer than for Flight two or three due to both COVID issues and learning curve, so its cost was higher than the others. The bulk of the write-off is due to Flight—ViaSat-3 Flight one, I-6 Flight two, about $350 million of capitalized interest. So I'll just briefly touch on our strategy before we go to Guru. Just to make sure, our strategy is to lead specific government, commercial, global mobility market segments that have common characteristics that drive value creation for our customers and for us.

We're looking for broadband customers whose connectivity is directly coupled to operational needs or wants, and where customers are motivated to understand and measure the quality of connectivity that they need for those purposes. We're looking for customers that want contractual assurance they get the connectivity they need for their missions over all the times and places their platforms travel. That means measuring the times and places where connectivity is most stressed, those congestion hotspots that can undermine achieving their operational purposes. We can attract and serve those customers by meeting specific granular service-level commitments and then giving them the data and insight they need to optimize their own financial performance. We think that describes a large and growing portion of the global mobile market.

Our success in in-flight connectivity is the outcome of applying that strategy over a journey of discovery that we've taken with our airline customers. First, quantifying the demand elasticity and value creation for different forms of in-flight Wi-Fi service offerings, and then measuring highly concentrated demand at peak times at busy airports that comes with high passenger engagement and where other services haven't really performed reliably. And then finally, as good connectivity becomes more widely available across airlines and routes, it becomes critical to each airline to both differentiate their brand and their value propositions from other airlines, while also capturing the value that's created by that connectivity. So we can apply these points to multiple market segments.

Once a few customers understand the significance of connectivity measurements over entire routes and the hotspot challenges, and then translate that into competitive advantage, it tends to drive change across entire market segments. The dynamic global coverage and beam steering of the ViaSat-3 constellation, even with an impaired Flight one, as well as the capabilities of the upcoming GX7, eight, nine series, support our strategy. So this continues to resonate with customers, and it's resulting in new business globally, including some examples this quarter, such as Korean Air, Malaysia Airlines, Atlantic Offshore, Porter Airlines, and with the U.S. Space Force and more. The other important element of our strategy is to better leverage Inmarsat's global L-band leadership.

L-band is very well suited to low cost, highly reliable, weather-resilient coverage for emergency voice and operational data, and there's growing opportunity to integrate both satellite and terrestrial coverage for Internet of Things and mainstream mobile devices. There's already substantial overlap in the customer base between our broadband and L-band markets, and there's good opportunity to further differentiate our integrated service offerings. So our near-term, our near-term growth outlook is good, and longer term is even more exciting. As part of our comprehensive review upon closing the Inmarsat acquisition, we're refining our strategy to make sure we're focused on the right market segments and refining value propositions that resonate with customers. As we complete and deploy the capital investments to take those value propositions global, that we generate the cash flow we're aiming for.

We're planning an Investor Day in March 2024, where we'll go into more depth on the analytics and the customer journeys that I'm describing that underpin our approach. So now, hand it over to Guru, who will talk about our second quarter.

Guru Gowrappan (President)

Great. Thanks, Mark. I will cover three key topics today: our Q2 financial performance, integration and transformation, and an update on our combined outlook. We are executing on our strategy and delivered a strong core financial and operational performance during Q2. Core revenue and Adjusted EBITDA both grew by double digits year-over-year, driven by our government, aviation, and maritime businesses. Legacy Inmarsat and Viasat both performed well with strong contributions. Some of the key highlights from the quarter include: Government Systems had another quarter of strong demand for our information assurance encryption products, which drove product revenue up 50% year-over-year. During the quarter, we were awarded a proliferated LEO satellite-based services contract by the U.S. Space Force as part of their $900 million IDIQ program.

Services will be comprised of our current and future satellite constellation capabilities, as well as a partner, LEO/MEO networks, to deliver integrated multi-orbit solutions that may include space relay services. Next, U.K. National Cyber Security Centre evaluated our next-generation data test cryptography solid state drive for top-secret classification, which was successful, and we are only hardware encrypted SSD using the industry standard interface and form factor to attain this status. Recent trends in satellite services continued with strong growth in commercial IFC, which ended the quarter with 3,350 aircraft in service, up 19% year-over-year on a combined basis, and 1,600 aircraft in backlog. US fixed broadband revenue declined as fewer residential subscribers were partially offset by higher ARPU. We continue to reallocate bandwidth to support our rapid IFC growth. In addition, we announced several commercial air customer updates.

As Mark mentioned earlier, Malaysia Airlines' selection of our IFE solution for its new Boeing 737-8 aircraft, Korean Air's selection of our IFC solution for its upcoming Airbus A321neo aircraft, and additional orders for both IFE and IFC solutions on Porter Airlines' new Embraer E195-E2 aircraft. Maritime revenue continued modest growth. The total Ka-band mobility platforms, which includes vessels and aircraft, grew to over 19,000, up about 2% sequentially. Finally, awards for the quarter were up 15% year-over-year to $1 billion. Backlog was $3.6 billion at quarter end. We have a couple of one-off items in Q2. In the commercial network segment, we recognized a non-recurring benefit to product revenue of $95 million and Adjusted EBITDA benefit of $86 million as a result of litigation settlement.

In the prior year period, we recorded revenue of $56 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $51 million related to the same litigation. We also announced $900 million of net asset impairment charges, primarily related to the previously announced satellite anomalies, which includes approximately $350 million of capitalized interest. Now, some color on the financials. Q2 FY2024 revenue was $1.2 billion. This was up 85% compared to revenue from continuing operations of $664 million in Q2 FY2023. Excluding the non-recurring litigation benefit from both years and including Inmarsat in both years, Q2 2024 revenue was up 16% year-over-year. Net loss totaled $767 million for fiscal Q2, which increased from $48 million net loss in the year-ago period, primarily due to net asset impairment charges related to satellite anomalies.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $486 million, an increase of 210% year-over-year from continuing operations. Excluding the non-recurring litigation benefit from both years, asset impairment charges, and including Inmarsat in both years, Q2 FY 2024 adjusted EBITDA was up 20% year-over-year. Sequentially, net leverage decreased to approximately 3.7x estimated combined last 12 months adjusted EBITDA as of Q2 FY 2024, which is a 0.2x sequential improvement and substantially favorable to the plan at the time the Inmarsat acquisition was announced.... We have significant financial flexibility with more than $3 billion of liquidity, including approximately $2 billion of cash and cash equivalents on our balance sheet at quarter end and no near-term maturities. We have a fully funded path to positive free cash flow.

In addition to our solid results, we were also proud to be recognized by the U.S. government at this year's G20 summit for our work to help close the gender digital divide and bring internet access to women in remote areas of the world. You can find a more complete review of our results in the shareholder letter that we posted today. Overall, as you heard from Mark as well, this was an excellent quarter for Viasat. Now, moving to the next topic, which is integration and transformation. Our integration of Inmarsat and the transformation of our combined organization is going well, and is ahead of the plan, bringing greater certainty that we will deliver and exceed our synergy goals for the Inmarsat acquisition.

Last week, we took the required labor actions to achieve annual operating expense savings of approximately $100 million beginning fiscal year 2025, which positions the company for improved profitability going forward. This timeline represents a multiyear acceleration relative to our targets. Separately, the benefit to capital expenditures was included in our FY 2025 guidance of $1.4 billion-$1.5 billion, announced last month. We expect to incur $45 million of one-time costs related to these actions. As financial discipline remains a top priority, we are working every opportunity to improve our cost structure and operational efficiency, including taking a closer look at our third-party procurement spend, more disciplined capital expenditure, and benchmarking to accelerate the timing and magnitude of free cash flow. Now transitioning to outlook. I'll wrap up with a high-level summary of our financial outlook.

We are excluding satellite impairment charges and the non-recurring benefit from the litigation settlement announced today from our guidance. For FY 2024, we expect revenue growth in the high single-digit percentage over FY 2023 for the combined company, with revenue growing to a range of $4.1 billion-$4.25 billion. For FY 2024, we expect Adjusted EBITDA growth in the mid-single-digit percentage over FY 2023 for the combined company. We expect FY 2024 Adjusted EBITDA to grow to a range of $1.25 billion-$1.3 billion. In FY 2025, we continue to expect both revenue and Adjusted EBITDA to grow.

FY 2024 capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $1.7 billion, then decline in FY 2025 to a range of $1.4 billion-$1.5 billion, inclusive of a placeholder for the potential funding of an I-6 F2 replacement. Capital expenditure guidance does not include the expected $770 million benefit from insurance recoveries. Note that we include capitalized interest in our CapEx guidance. Our path to positive free cash flow in the first half of calendar year 2025 is driven by sourcing growth from our large and growing markets, which includes government, aviation, and maritime, realization of our sizable backlog, meaningful cost rationalization, and a disciplined CapEx spending, which benefits from the natural decline as we launch our satellites.

We are driving cost structure improvements with synergies, scale, and benchmarking, and the magnitude of free cash flow is expected to increase meaningfully as we place ViaSat-3 F2 and F3 satellites into service. So there you have it. You know, while we've had unfortunate satellite setbacks, we have a very good hand, and we are optimizing and growing the strong assets we have. Our operational performance in Q2 was excellent, and we are on track to achieve very material synergy value, then expect the combined company to grow revenue and adjusted EBITDA in FY 2024 and FY 2025, while creating a powerful global mobility and government business. And to be clear, our FY 2025 growth is based on a full 12 months of Inmarsat in FY 2024. With that, I'll pass it back to Mark.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Okay, thanks, Guru, and with that, I think we'll open it up for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll take the first question from Phil Cusick, JPMorgan.

Phil Cusick (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Hi, thank you. I guess a couple, if I can. First, was the decision to move away from the Viasat-4 and focus on mobility, a statement on the viability of home broadband from satellite, or is that more of a just timing and capital needs? And then second, can you talk about the plans for the cash on the balance sheet and the insurance proceeds coming in? There's some debt at a discount. Does it make sense to pick off that, or do you want to have this cash on the balance sheet for a long time? Thank you.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Okay. Yeah. First, on the ViaSat-4. The... You know, we have been-

... targeting the mobility broadband market for, you know, probably for about as long as we've been in, you know, since we launched ViaSat-1. And, you know, it's because the customers value the services better. We're not dealing with or competing with government subsidies. And the other thing now that that's really come to light, especially, you know, in our experience in flight and the data that we have from Inmarsat in the maritime business, is that you know, dealing with that mobility factor and concentration of demand is a really hard and tricky problem. We think we're really well-suited to do that. And whereas, you know, the original design of ViaSat-4 that we started really was about large bulk amounts of bandwidth at low cost.

What, you know, what we're really gonna be leveraging is global coverage and the ability to put that demand in the same patterns as the customer's usage requires. So, so we feel like we can do better in that we, we've got seven other Ka-band satellites that will be launched over about the next three years. So we, you know, so we felt it made complete economic sense to, you know, to focus on those, the mobility markets, and then bring a new broadband mobility satellite to market following those later on, you know, later at the end of the decade.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Hey, Phil, I can hit your question on the, on the cash on the balance sheet. So I think a couple things. One, you know, just wanna, given the credit markets, wanna stay in a very, you know, good liquid position and keep that liquidity and agility in the, you know, on, on the balance sheet. You know, I think if you think about the net carry, given the investments we've been able to make and net of the tax and, you know, impacts of the interest expense and the benefits we get there, it's just—it's not as, you know, painful to carry that flexibility, and so that's kind of a guidepost for us right now.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next up, we'll hear from Mike Crawford, B. Riley Securities.

Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director and Head of the Discovery Group)

Thank you. In commercial networks, you have this Cisco settlement off of the sold jury award that you won against Acacia when its co-founder stole some source code structure and emailed it to their employees. But so now you've got two settlements with them, but also there's this ongoing licensing and royalty requirement that I guess is gonna improve ongoing commercial network EBITDA. Is there any way you can quantify what that might be or how long that might last?

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Hey, Mike. You know, yeah, we do have some ongoing benefits from the agreement, but the terms of the agreement are confidential, so we can't really give you the details there. We have included the benefits we expect in the outlook, though.

Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director and Head of the Discovery Group)

Okay. Thank you, Shawn. And then, regarding the status of, I guess, the ViaSat-3 F2 and F3 satellites, so is there you're waiting to attach the final reflector component? Like, how is there a way you can quantify the timing of some of these steps so we know when potentially there could be a launch, let's say, if you got it all clear to move ahead, you know, say, next week?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Okay. Yeah, the schedule for integration of the reflector, once it's delivered to Boeing, is pretty clear. That the thing that we're gonna get more information on next week is what that lead time will be for the reflector delivery. You know, I think we have a very good understanding of what step in the, you know, in the deployment process, failed, and how to avoid that on, on the next deployment. And then, there's potentially even additional measures that we could use to back those up. That's what, that's what we'll find out, and we'll have that discussion. We'll, we'll, I think it'd be better to get the data before we speculate. For Flight three, the Flight three has been on the it's, you know, same schedule for quite a long time.

I think since the last time we reported, we executed a launch contract for... And that's for the Q4, which was really driven by launch vehicle availability, launch window availability. So that, that one, I think, is that, you know, that one we're pretty confident in. You know, then the issue will just be if it turns out that the two satellites end up being very close together, we'll figure out how to prioritize, you know, how to prioritize them or the extent to which we could do them both at the same time if, if that was the case.

Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director and Head of the Discovery Group)

Okay. Thank you, Mark. And then just maybe two really quick ones. You, you mentioned Space Force Mobility Services. Is that something that's new, and is that something that would show up in government systems or satellite services?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

That would show up in government systems, and it's. Yeah, it is new. It's new for us, and it's a little bit unique to, you know, to our networking services, more of networking technology and our services both.

Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director and Head of the Discovery Group)

... Okay, thank you. And then the last one is just, did I hear correctly that the, the IP from ViaSat-4, even though it was supposed to give you some kind of sevenfold increase in capacity versus, say, a ViaSat-3, that there's no way to put any of those innovations in any of these next seven K-band satellites that are launching, but, but, but it, it would—first we would see what would be in the, in, in a mobility satellite after that. Is that what I heard?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. So, I mean, the seven satellites that are under construction are, you know, all in very... Well, at least the ViaSat-3s and the GX10s are, you know, pretty close to completion. The GX7, eight, and nine are also already, they're well underway. So it'll go, those techniques will go into the next generation broadband one. And the main, you know, the main thing that we're really focused on is getting very large field of view in this dynamic beam hopping and improving, you know, improving not just the raw capacity, but the capacity that we deliver overlaid on top of the demand distributions that we're seeing in these mobility markets, which are, we spent some time discussing on our shareholder presentation in September, but those, being able to match those patterns is really, really valuable.

And so that, I think that's a better metric for value creation.

Mike Crawford (Senior Managing Director and Head of the Discovery Group)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Mike.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Next up, you have a question from Ric Prentice, Raymond James.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Hi, Ric.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Hey, busy afternoon, but first, appreciate the guidance, kind of, clarity, helping us understand growth rates, but also dollars. That really helps us, because there's a lot of moving pieces here, obviously. One quick one, too. I think I heard you say that the fiscal 2024 revenue guidance would exclude... Well, let me just ask the question this way: Does the revenue guidance include or exclude the litigation and the revenue?

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

That-

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Go ahead, Shawn.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Yeah. That excludes the non-recurring part of that, Ric.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

The growth percentage.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

The growth percentage.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

The growth percentage, yes.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Yeah.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

The range, the range and the growth percentage.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Oh, okay.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Yes. Both. Both. So it excludes the effect of the non-recurring for Acacia. And I think-

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Okay, so the dollars... Yeah, go ahead.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Yeah, I was going to say, Ric, and just one thing to clarify, and the dollars only include 10 months of Inmarsat.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas the percents are apples to apples, 12 month, 12 month.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

For a trend, yes.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Right. Exactly. Okay, good. Good. Yeah, because in the shareholder letter, I, you know, picked up that the EBITDA was excluding the litigation, and so the revenue is excluded as well.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Mm-hmm.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Okay, cool. On growth in fiscal 2025, is there any way to tease out kind of a zip code? You know, are we talking low single digit, mid single digit, high single digit, teens? You know, what should we think about? What does grow revenue and EBITDA in fiscal 2025 mean? And that would be, I think, a 12-month over 12-month comparison also.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, Ric, we are not commenting on that at this point. I think we are— Well, yeah, next quarter. I think next quarter— Next quarter, we'll give you more clarity. Yeah. It'll be closer. We'll be closer to it, and we'll be able to give a better range.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Okay. Okay. That, that helps a lot. And then, piggybacking on Phil's question a little bit there, I mean, for a long time, heck, even when I was in the industry, I used to think of satellite, the best use of bandwidth, the best bang for your buck, was to go after these better margin areas. We call it the GAME: Government, Aviation, Maritime, and Enterprise. As you think about how you're running the business, is there a different way than just lumping a lot of stuff into satellite services that might be more informed to help us understand the businesses or how you manage the business, both in financials and on metrics? Because it does feel to me like the, the Government, Aviation, Maritime, and Enterprise are probably the better segments to go after, but it's hard from the outside, really modeling it and understanding it.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Yeah. So I think, Ric, if I'm understanding the question, is just how are we thinking about things looking forward with the segments?

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Yep.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

You know, I think one thing, you can see the service growth in our government business, so you know, I do think you get some insight there. You know, I think the way that we look at the business going forward, I think that's something we're going to continue to think about as the business evolves.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director and Global Head of Telecommunications Services Research)

Okay. Last one for me is: As we think about, again, zip code thought, fiscal 2026 seems a long way away, and appreciate the thought of what happens from fiscal 2024 to 2025 on CapEx. We get the question a lot about what is maintenance CapEx versus kind of the growth CapEx as you put satellites up there. So any way you can kind of help us start thinking about what a ongoing maintenance level is for the business, and then also what 2026 directionally might be in total CapEx?

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

You know, Ric, I think the best way to think about that is, you know, just what we've talked about is as we get the satellites into service, we're going to continue to see the CapEx tick downward. And so that's what we would expect from 2025 to 2026 as well. You know, our maintenance CapEx is, or maybe a better way to say it is our satellite CapEx is the dominant part of our capital spend. And so, you know, as we finish off on those fleets,

... that's how you, you know, you're driving that efficiency downward, you know, going forward.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

I can add a little bit. You know, the maintenance CapEx, think about that. The dominant factor is the per capita subscriber bandwidth consumption, right? Net of ARPU gains. So that is most evident in the consumer markets. In these mobility markets, it's, you know, it's a, it's still present in things like when you think of, in-flight connectivity and passenger video consumption, you'll see some of those same effects, but not to the same extent that you'll see them in, residential. So that's...

And if you look at kind of our history, having been, you know, in the satellite services business for, like, for over 10 years, you know, one of the things we, we've been able to do is still get greater productivity out of our satellites, largely from migrating a lot of the bandwidth from mobility, from residential to mobility. And then the other thing that we've done in general, really well is improve the yield of the satellite. That is the, you know, the gigabits per megabyte investment in the satellites or the satellite utility by better matching supply and demand. So you have to kind of look at all those factors to end up teasing out, you know, maintenance CapEx from growth CapEx.

But, you know, we've been able to drive growth from our CapEx, I think, to a pretty high degree, and I think we'll do even better on a go-forward basis with the emphasis on mobility.

Guru Gowrappan (President)

Yeah. I think one other point I would add, Ric, is, you know, if you look at what I mentioned on CapEx, it says FY 2024, $1.7 billion, and the range for 2025, $1.4 billion-$1.5 billion. And then, as you know, big set number of satellites are getting done in the next few years, as you heard from Mark. So we do expect FY 2026 to come down as we launch these satellites. So from a broader guidance perspective.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

On an absolute dollar basis.

Guru Gowrappan (President)

Yeah. Yes.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah.

Okay. And we look forward to the Investor Day coming up in March as well.

Yeah. Yes, we will.

Guru Gowrappan (President)

Okay.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Ric.

Guru Gowrappan (President)

Thanks, everybody.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Chris Quilty, Quilty Space.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

Investor Day in Carlsbad or New York?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

New York.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

Okay. Carlsbad's nicer, but New York's easier to get to. Question for you. The number of aircraft net adds looked a little light in the quarter. Is that primarily just seasonal or timing? And can you give us a thought of, you know, kind of what to expect on a go-forward net add rate, either in the back half of the year or going into next year? And then a broader question on the IFC, just what's the general pipeline looking like now, in terms of aircraft or airlines that are, you know, new to IFC, still coming on board? Is it a strong pipeline? Has there been weakness because of interest rates or fuel prices or, you know, just general temperament of the market?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Okay. On the first part, I'd say there are two pretty... I mean, if you just look from a macro perspective, there have been two kind of drags on installs from the airline's perspective. One is the delivery rates of new aircraft, which have been kind of behind schedule from both of the major OEMs. You know, we've done well on new line fit contracts. And so the line fit, you know, the line fit, which is driven by aircraft deliveries, that's lower than, you know, lower. I mean, you just look at the OEM's delivery issues, and that you can kind of gauge how, you know, how that would be allocated among the different airlines. So Delta and United are big customers of ours.

Then the other one has been, you know, just the fill factor on existing flights, which has kinda feel sort of discouraged the airlines from or slowed down some of the retrofits on the existing fleet. And I think, I think there's, you know, some, some of that is seasonal. So on the one hand, when Shawn mentioned seasonality before for the in-flight space, you know, it—that part's good for us because more passengers, and it's driven more demand, and it's been, been good for revenue, but it has slowed down installs a little bit. Backlog's still, you know, backlog's still really strong, and we'd say that the pipeline of new airlines is good.

You know, I think that, you know, the kind of way to put it is that the, you know, the U.S. market has been probably the most forward-leaning on in-flight connectivity. I think that it's also becoming clear that the, that there's monetization strategies, right? That it's not just... It doesn't have to be just an expense for the airlines. And so that is really drawing in a lot of interest from airlines that maybe were on the sidelines before, and if they can both get the amenity and figure out how to better monetize it, that's a good combination. I think that, that is spreading more globally.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

... Understand. Clarification, the CapEx guidance for next year, did you say the $1.4-$1.5 includes a possible provision for a I-6 replacement?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yes, that's correct.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

Okay. And, you know, timing-wise, I guess you, you've got, you know, two modern L-band satellites, the, the I-6 F1 and the Alphabus. The I-4s are 17 years old. If you get an order in, you know, next year, on that satellite, we're looking at three years. Does that leave, you know, enough, time-wise, you know, coverage on the L-band capacity, given the age of the, the legacy satellites?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yes.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

Running good on fuel?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yes. Yeah, and, you know, we also have-

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

Okay.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Besides, I mean, besides the existing fleet, we also, Inmarsat, I think, right around the time of the acquisition, announced a fleet of three I-8 satellites that'll be arriving kind of in that same timeframe, maybe a little bit earlier.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

How much capacity would those have? Because those are small GEOs.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

We're haven't been reporting the capacity on the L-band satellites, but the thing, you know, the thing that we are focused on is, you know, when we talk about next generation L-band, the big thing is increasing the capacity of those satellites dramatically. The I-8s were really aimed at the, you know, extending the existing safety, basically the safety and emergency services. And so that's good, I think, in terms of shoring up the existing fleet. But part of our CapEx budget on a go-forward basis, and part of what we're talking about in ecosystem building, is to really modernize that whole fleet, and we'll talk about that separately when we're ready.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

Gotcha. Final question. I mean, as you're moving away from the I-4 and, or, sorry, the ViaSat-4 and the, you know, sort of massive capacity towards satellites that are more, you know, agile, mobility capable, does that mean it's more likely that you're—you'll buy something off the shelf from, you know, a Thales Alenia Space or Airbus that have, you know, software-defined satellites, that, that they've already fielded? Or is it something that you're likely to do internally because of some, you know, design capability that you have internally?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

At the time that we do it, we will definitely look at what's available off the shelf, for sure. But we haven't seen—so far, we haven't seen things off the shelf that have the capability of the technology that we're doing on ViaSat-3 or we're doing on ViaSat-4. So we're going to, you know, we're gonna do a comparison. One of the things we also will be able to do, by holding off a few years, is we will be able to do some risk reduction. But when I say risk reduction, schedule risk as well as budget risk, reduction. So we, you know, we intend to do a lot better in terms of, scheduling budget, on the following ones.

Then also, there, there's some really interesting technologies that we can test that can also reduce costs and improve productivity. But those are the things that we're looking at. But there are some, you know. So far, you know, on ViaSat-3, absent that anomaly, everything's worked well, and Four was just an enhancement of that. So that technology, that's something that we can draw on, if you know, things play out the way we expect.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

Gotcha. And partly, did you say whether the EMEA satellite was going to Americas and the Pacific bird to EMEA, or have you decided that yet?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yep, we have our options on both. You know, we're really focused on meeting the needs of our mobility customers, and that's how we're gonna prioritize them.

Chris Quilty (Co-CEO and President)

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Edison Yu from Deutsche Bank has the next question.

Edison Yu (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, thank you very much for taking our questions. First, as you kind of peel away at, you know, Inmarsat, do you have any updated thoughts, maybe on the various pieces that may not be strategically important, especially on the L-band side? Just curious, any thoughts there?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

No, I mean, we, we are really, we are very interested in, in L-band. I think that, you know, Inmarsat has applied L-band into some, you know, a variety of very different markets. There's U.S. defense, there's international government applications, there's really interesting voice and data applications, and there are the safety ones. What we see is, if, you know, and our, our long-term objective really is to grow with the direct-to-device market and the IoT market. And when I say IoT, it's really gonna be the shared terrestrial and mobile, these devices that can operate off both terrestrial and mobile. We're aiming to, you know, to be able to bring some of those to market soon.

And then, we do think that the things that we do to the satellites to enable that can really, kind of boost the existing mobile satellite services market substantially. So we're, we're really interested in, in the services, the, the whole range of services that Inmarsat performs now. We think that's a good foundation, for somebody who wants to go in, you know, for anybody who wants to go into these, kind of direct-to-device markets.

Edison Yu (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Understood. And you mentioned D2D, and I think you've kind of alluded to some potential paths into, you know, getting in there. Do we have any kind of updated thoughts about D2D going forward, maybe on the, you know, using that extra L-band?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Not yet. We, you know, we are working on some, and I expect that we'll have more to talk about next quarter, but we're not going to say more about it today.

Edison Yu (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. And then there's one last one on IFC. So, you know, I think there were some announcements from one of Inmarsat's customers, Qatar Airways, and Starlink. And there was a little bit of confusion, I think, at least from our end or on the public end. Can you maybe just go over exactly what kind of happened there with Starlink? Is it, did they, like, shift that over, or what exactly is going on?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Well, I think it'd probably be best to ask them. I don't think we want to speak for them on this.

Edison Yu (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Edison.

Operator (participant)

Next question comes from Louie DiPalma, William Blair.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

Mark, Ric, Shawn, Robert, and Peter, good afternoon.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Good afternoon, Louie. Hey, Louie.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

What percentage of revenue will the residential fixed broadband be by the end of fiscal 2024, as it seems that you're de-emphasizing it?

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Yeah, Louie, I can jump in here. So I think what we've talked about in the past, right, is that part of our business with, you know, the combined with Inmarsat and so forth, is less than 15%. And, you know, as we continue to prioritize our bandwidth and, you know, work with our supporting the growth in our IFC business, you'd expect that to, you know, continue to scale downward.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

Okay, thanks.

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Okay.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

Sean, yeah. For, have you disclosed who the third ViaSat-3 launch contract is with? And also for that launch, I think you said in the fourth calendar quarter of 2024, have you been able to procure insurance for that launch?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

On the launch provider, we will put out a press release. I mean, generally, we want to cooperate with the launch providers just to make sure that they're that they approve the release for it. So we'll do that in the near future. On the insurance-

Shawn Duffy (CFO)

Insurance? Yeah, I can jump in there. So, you know, on the second satellite, you know, that insurance is already done, just as a reminder, Louie, and we're starting to work on the next one. And, you know, I think that's kind of in process, but, you know, we're good to have the second one all wrapped up.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. But and then just to be-

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

Okay.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Just to add on to that, I mean, you know, the insurance, the insurers tend to be very detail-oriented. So the review that we're going to have next week with the antenna manufacturer, even though it's a different satellite, it's a different antenna manufacturer for Flight three than Flight two, insurers tend to be, you know, they're really interested in the details. And so I think that having those details available will help them understand what happened and will help us with placing the insurance.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

Great. And as it relates to the fiscal 25 CapEx guidance, is it a good estimate to assume that the I-6 replacement satellite would cost around $400 million? So if you don't elect to go ahead with that, that you could just subtract it from the $1.4 billion-$1.5 billion number as, you know, what could be your CapEx for fiscal 25.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Now, for fiscal 25, what was in the budget would be the portion of replacing that mission that would have been spent in that fiscal year.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

Okay. Do you have an estimate on what that would be?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

No, we're not going to do that yet. We are evaluating multiple options, and we're aiming, you know, we're aiming to simplify it. So again, we're not. I've got to make sure that we make the right decision. We're not ready yet, and so it just would be premature to give a dollar value for that.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

Okay. And, and one final one. As it relates to direct to device, it seems that Inmarsat was previously partnering with Skylo, and they've established chip partnerships with Samsung's chip arm and MediaTek. Have you continued those partnerships such that you would, in effect, be the direct-to-device partner for Skylo's, you know, future initiatives?

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

... I mean, I think you're gonna see kind of ecosystems evolve around the direct-to-device, and they're going to include, you know, device makers and chip makers, spectrum holders, satellite operators, and others. And, you know, the ones that you described are all attractive, you know, members of those ecosystems. And I think, you know, as we've mentioned before, we think Inmarsat's got a really interesting role to play, especially in, you know, there will be different generations of standards. The current one, which is the narrowband IoT, next, you know, non-terrestrial network. I think you'll see those come to market soon, right? Like within, you know, within quarters. And yes, there's definitely a role for us to play there.

Louie DiPalma (Equity Research Analyst of Aerospace & Defense)

Excellent. Thanks, Mark, and thanks, everyone.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Louie.

Operator (participant)

Just a reminder, it is star one, if you have a question. We'll pause for just a moment. I'll hand the conference back to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

Mark Dankberg (Chairman and CEO)

Okay. So, thanks, everybody, for joining us this afternoon. Just wanna remind you of a few important takeaways from the quarter. We felt the results were really good. Generated, you know, 16% year-over-year revenue growth and 20% year-over-year Adjusted EBITDA growth on like-for-like basis. We're doing well on the Inmarsat integration program. We're kind of ahead of schedule and ahead of budget so far. We think we have a clear and good value proposition on global mobility that's built on meaningful and granular service level commitments, even in the most challenging places and times. That's resonated with customers, especially in the very competitive U.S. in-flight market, and we think the same kinds of analytics, insights, and bringing confidence to global markets in aviation, maritime, and government, we think that's gonna work for us.

We're confident our business will continue to grow revenue and Adjusted EBITDA in fiscal year 2024, 2025. We'll give more additional guidance on that next quarter for FY 2025. And we're aiming to become free cash flow positive in the first half of calendar year 2025. Have taken a lot of the steps that we think we're gonna need to get there, and we think we'll get meaningful and sustainable free cash flow during fiscal 2026. So with that, look forward to updating y'all on our continued progress next quarter, and I'll hand it back to the operator now.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Once again, everyone, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.