Viasat Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 6, 2024

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Meg, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the 2nd Quarter 2025 AvayaSat Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Session. Thank you. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Lisa Curran, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go

Speaker 1

ahead. Thanks, Meg. We will present certain non GAAP financial measures on today's call. Information required by the SEC relating to these non GAAP financial measures is available in our Q2 fiscal year 2025 shareholder letter on the Investor Relations section of our website. During the presentation, we will describe certain of the more significant factors that impacted year over year performance.

Speaker 1

We will also make forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding events or developments that we expect or anticipate will or may occur in the future. These forward looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and actual results might differ materially from any forward looking statements that we make today. Information regarding these factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from these forward looking statements is available in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10 ks. These forward looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we do not assume any obligation to update any forward looking statements. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO.

Speaker 2

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us today. With me, along with Lisa, we have Guru Gobind, our President Carrie Chase, our CFO and Sean Duffy, our Chief Accounting Officer. We encourage reading the shareholder letter and referencing the slides we posted on our website earlier this afternoon for more details. I'll give a quick overview of the shareholder letter, Guru will briefly cover operations and Gary will cover our financial results and highlights and our growth outlook and then we'll take questions. Our Q2 fiscal year 2025 results were better than expected in terms of revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth as described in the shareholder letter and slides.

Speaker 2

We also continue to take actions to strengthen our capital structure including an upsized refinancing of nearly $2,000,000,000 of 20.26 secondured notes. New contract awards in the Q2 were a new record at about $1,300,000,000 and were led by Defense and Advanced Technologies, which doubled year over year awards led by cybersecurity, ground systems and space and mission systems and by aviation connectivity services. Our recent teach in highlighted the attractive growth potential and durable competitive advantages in key technologies such as next generation free space optical technology, mission specific phased array terminals, space based cybersecurity and others. Our Q2 Defense and Advanced Technology or DAT awards reinforce that we're on the right track, including the U. S.

Speaker 2

Government program, international government opportunities and certain commercial markets. 1 of the unifying themes among our customers is access to a diverse set of orbit spectrum and constellations and avoiding overdependence on single individual systems. Of course, we understand the intensity of competition in some of the core businesses that makes the size, competitive positioning and growth prospects of these DAT opportunities especially exciting. We're open minded about the best ways to capitalize on these opportunities and are actively evaluating alternatives, while those businesses are both delivering growth and increasing their potential. We're also very pleased to have Gary Chase join us as our new CFO.

Speaker 2

Gary's leadership experience in strategic, operational and financial planning will augment our focus on cash conversion, return on capital, converting to a more balanced capital structure and operating financial profile. Gary will provide additional experienced financial leadership on the areas we highlighted last quarter, including identifying, evaluating and executing the best alternatives to realize the value embedded in the business portfolio, leading detailed business operations, financial reviews to ensure we're at peak operational productivity levels with corresponding margin performance and leading detailed capital allocation reviews to ensure we're optimizing return on capital in the near and long term. The main point is we're exploring additional financial and capital structure perspectives. We're also continuing to drive down capital intensity by augmenting our own satellites through both tactical and strategic third party agreements. We're in advanced discussions with Telesat to buy KA band LEO Cabana.

Speaker 2

By leveraging our own fleet and its unique capabilities, existing national operator partnerships and unique coverage and or capabilities of additional third party satellites and constellations, we can both ensure our customers are getting the performance and coverage they need and more explicitly measure and drive improved returns on capital. Our satellite operator partners are often national space champions in key countries and geographic regions, and they're seeking a robust global space ecosystem to support their own national security and sovereignty. We're working with both GSO and NGSO systems. Gary will provide more color on capital spending in his remarks. Other key corporate initiatives include evolving L band to create value for the millions of people that depend on its use for safety and time activity, the air, at sea and on land.

Speaker 2

We have a very significant opportunity to also concurrently greatly expand our addressable market through these evolved services and by leveraging the non terrestrial network and direct to device standards and open architecture enabling multi tenant satellites. We see multiple avenues to create value for our shareholders, customers and partners and continue to work with like minded mobile satellite service operators through the Mobile Satellite Services Association. And last, but certainly not least, we're focused on getting our satellites under construction into service. We've already accumulated substantial in flight connectivity, operational performance experience with ViaSat-three flight 1 that reinforces the value of its dynamic beamforming technology to apply all its bandwidth in the most important places, especially for mobility applications. It's clear that being able to effectively dedicate Beam to airplanes drives performance.

Speaker 2

We continue to work on and make progress on our satellite roadmap. Now touching on the business areas. Expected declines in fixed broadband remain our single biggest headwind, but that headwind is decelerating. We're seeing increased global enterprise fixed opportunities and we'll report on those as they mature. We're seeing declines in maritime revenue, primarily in prior generation L band fleet broadband and that's been going on for several years.

Speaker 2

The fleet broadband declines were meaningful, but also decelerating. Ka broadband maritime or Fleet Express is experiencing much more modest deployment in revenue while largely retaining net vessel count. The multi orbit, multi band Nexus Wave product is now in beta trials and doing well and already leading to full scale deployments for some initial customers. We already have an order pipeline of over 100 customers representing about 3,500 vessels. About a third of those are new customers offering a good opportunity to increase net vessels.

Speaker 2

We'll continue to update the maritime outlook based on market data and installation rates, but our overall confidence is building. Longer term, we see further maritime addressable market opportunities with evolved L Van. Commercial and Business Aviation are growing well. New OEM aircraft delivery constraints are a bottleneck to active tail count and the Boeing strike added to that issue. We've been working through the near term capacity challenges associated with the ViaSat-three flight 1 antenna anomaly and are making steady progress with network reconfigurations and expansion to serve our customers and expected growth.

Speaker 2

We've already been doing multi orbit government aviation and are definitizing extending multi orbit multi band to all our aviation verticals. We believe that multi orbit combined with our existing and planned owned and partner satellite fleet will be very, very competitive. U. S. And international government are also growing well with opportunities for both technology and service businesses.

Speaker 2

Key themes for us include multi orbit, OP band integration and management, product and technology solutions, advanced platform specific phased array antennas, space based cyber, next generation laser link and space payload technologies. We see accelerating growth here, obviously reinforced by the exceptional second quarter awards. Gary will provide more color on the financial aspects of many of these points in his portion. With that, I'll hand it over to the group.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Mark. I'm going to provide a brief organizational and operational update and then introduce a new member of our executive team. YSI teams are focused, fostering collaboration and operating as one to deliver results while continuing to sharpen our execution rigor. This is core to how we show up and execute for our customers and partners, which in turn drives value creation. Our quarterly highlights only scratch the surface, but show the good momentum we are building.

Speaker 3

We know there's

Speaker 2

a lot of work to

Speaker 3

be done and progress is being made as we continue to put our customers first. We continue to align our internal organizational structure in support of our strategic goals and to take advantage of our scale to improve operational efficiency. We are making great progress across the company to leverage our strength across department and ensure a cohesive technology strategy that supports our growth and innovation. Nexus Wave is an excellent example of this. Our operating model fostered the collaboration and cross functional problem solving necessary to develop and bring to market an industry first offering like Nexus Wave.

Speaker 3

Mark mentioned that it's off to a very good start with an order pipeline already at 3,500 vessels. In the near term, primarily in our indirect channel, 3rd party companion offerings created incremental ARPU pressure on flattish FX vessel count this quarter. We are refining our channel strategy for indirect. We expect NEXUS Wave will enable a return to net vessel growth and ARPU expansion in maritime, But the near term is offset primarily by reductions in legacy, fleet broadband, some declines in indirect FX ARPU and modest FX net vessel count production. As we continue to navigate the dynamic landscape of our industry, we will remain adaptable and responsive to our businesses' needs.

Speaker 3

This means continuously improving our structure, processes and strategies to ensure they are optimized for success. Our goal is to create an agile and efficient organization that can quickly leverage opportunities and challenges to drive growth and enhance value capture. Now, I would like to introduce a new member of our executive leadership team, Gary Chase, who joins us as Chief Financial Officer. Gary Chase joined ViaSat after more than 12 years with Delta Airlines in various senior financial roles, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Operational Finance. We are excited to have Gary's depth of experience and track record of execution in financial planning and analysis, strategic planning, corporate development, operational finance, capital structure management and cost efficiency improvement.

Speaker 3

Prior to joining Delta, Gary was an equity research analyst at Barclays Capital having covered the airline and transportation industries. Now, I would like to hand it over to Gary.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Guru. Well, I'm excited to join ViaSat at such an important time in the company's history. I have a tremendous amount of respect for ViaSat's businesses and global mission of delivering safety and connectivity to customers in the air, at sea and on land. I'm grateful for the support I've gotten from the whole ViaSat team in my early days, but especially our finance team led by Sean and I may well need some of that support during the Q and A. As a team, we look forward to partnering with Mark Gurru and the rest of the leadership group to further advance the finance function and its support for ViaSat's strategic initiatives, especially shareholder value creation.

Speaker 4

I'm going to cover 2 topics, financial performance and outlook. But before I get there, let me thank all of my ViaSat colleagues for the hard work that led to these results. All of the comparisons in the Q2 discussion that follows exclude the non recurring catch up contribution from the litigation settlement in the Q2 of fiscal 2024, which benefited revenue by $95,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA by $86,000,000 Looking now at Q2 fiscal 2025 financial results. Awards were a record, up 25% year over year. Our Defense and Advanced Technologies segment and Aviation Connectivity Services led the growth.

Speaker 4

Revenue was $1,120,000,000 down 1% compared to $1,130,000,000 in last year's Q2 reflecting declines in fixed broadband and maritime within communication services, partially offset by strong growth in aviation and tactical networking products in our Defense and Advanced Technologies segment. Net loss of $138,000,000 improved from the net loss of $767,000,000 a year ago, which was primarily due to the impairment charge related to our satellite program. Adjusted EBITDA was $375,000,000 a decline of 6% year over year. As noted in last year's shareholder letter, the Q2 of fiscal 2024 benefited by $18,000,000 from the resolution of the Euro Broadband Infrastructure or EBI contingent consideration agreement. Excluding that benefit, adjusted EBITDA was down less than 2% year over year with the declines in our Communications Services segment partially offset by continued strong growth in defense and advanced technologies.

Speaker 4

Capital expenditures declined 37% year over year to $229,000,000 decreasing primarily due to lower satellite expenditures related to shifts to future quarters of certain space and ground infrastructure payments. As a reminder, capital expenditures can be lumpy from quarter to quarter. The lower CapEx helped us generate approximately $10,000,000 of positive free cash flow during the quarter, which while transitory is indicative of the free cash flow opportunities ahead as we leverage the ViaSat-three fleet and augment our capacity and network performance with 3rd party bandwidth. During the quarter, we also collected approximately $120,000,000 of satellite insurance proceeds. We've received more than 90% of the $770,000,000 of insurance claims we anticipate by the end of the fiscal year.

Speaker 4

Please note that the collection of insurance proceeds are recorded as cash flow from investing, but have no impact on our free cash flow calculation, which is defined as cash from operations, less purchases of property, equipment and satellites. In September, we issued $1,980,000,000 of Inmarsat 29 notes. The amount of the oversubscribed offering was increased from the initial size of 1,250,000,000 dollars We received the cash from the issuance prior to quarter end, but had also repurchased $257,000,000 in principal amount of 2025 notes in open market transactions during the quarter at a small discount to par. So quarter end cash and cash equivalents was $3,500,000,000 gross debt was $9,100,000,000 and net debt was $5,500,000,000 Subsequent to quarter end, on October 1, we used the net proceeds from the issuance of the Inmarsat 29 note together with cash on hand to redeem all of the outstanding Inmarsat 26 notes. After adjusting for the redemption of the Inmarsat 26 notes, pro form a cash and cash equivalents was $1,600,000,000 gross debt $7,100,000,000 and net debt the same $5,500,000,000 Adjusting for the refinancing transaction, our annual cash interest expense is expected to be approximately $560,000,000 partially offset by interest income on our cash balances.

Speaker 4

Finally, net leverage was slightly lower year over year and slightly up sequentially as expected at approximately 3.6 times trailing adjusted EBITDA as of the second quarter. Now let's take a closer look at our segment performance during the quarter starting with Communication Services. Aviation continues to compete very well in the market and won new business in the quarter with both existing and new customers. In addition to the prior ongoing OEM delays, there were aircraft delivery delays related to the Boeing strike. Still, commercial IFC ended the quarter with 3,820 aircraft in service, up about 14% year over year and drove contracted backlog to more than 1500 aircraft despite sequential and double digit year over year growth in our active count.

Speaker 4

While we're confident in the FY 'twenty five growth outlook and trajectory for aviation, results continue to be affected by delivery delays, including the incremental effects of the just settled Boeing strike. During the quarter, we expanded our partnership with Azul to equip new line fit Airbus A330-900neos with in flight WiFi and our ad supported streaming services using our advertising platform. U. S. Fixed broadband revenue declined as expected, driven by fewer residential subscribers.

Speaker 4

We continue to allocate capacity towards meeting the growing demand for higher value commercial IFC and Aviation businesses. Our government SATCOM business unit grew service revenue 6% year over year as strong demand for diversified satellite connectivity remained a top budget priority. Within maritime, as Guru and Mark talked about, NEXUS Wave results thus far are above expectations and the strong interest in service level selection we're seeing in our direct channel is promising. Communications services revenue was $826,000,000 down 2% year over year reflecting the anticipated decline in U. S.

Speaker 4

Fixed broadband services and by maritime and partially offset by strong growth in aviation and government satcom. Those revenue impacts yielded adjusted EBITDA of $318,000,000 down 9% year over year. Excluding the $18,000,000 EBI benefit from the prior year quarter, adjusted EBITDA was down 4% year over year. Now turning to Defense and Advanced Technologies performance during the quarter. Our DAT segment had an excellent quarter of awards.

Speaker 4

Our book to bill ratio was 1.7 times in the quarter. Awards of $510,000,000 more than doubled versus $241,000,000 in the prior year period. Information Security and Cyber Defense won awards totaling just over $200,000,000 for encryption products, largely reflecting continued growth in data center demand driven by geographic expansion and growing data intensive AI application. Space and Mission Systems received awards of approximately $150,000,000 related to multifunction phased array antennas and payload technology including 3 space optics and antenna systems infrastructure with support services. I want to highlight an award from the U.

Speaker 4

S. Air Force Research Laboratory under the Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet Program to develop electronically steered antennas for tactical resilient communications using commercial satellite connectivity across various frequencies and multiple orbits. We're excited about the potential for an expanding role in secure multi orbit, multi band connectivity. Defense and Advanced Technologies revenue was $296,000,000 up 4% compared to $284,000,000 a year ago. Strength was primarily driven by tactical networking and the strong IP licensing revenue just mentioned.

Speaker 4

Similar to last quarter, Treleswear within the tactical networking business line benefited by a larger bulk order for product upgrade licenses across already deployed U. S. And Allied Forces radios. This generated an additional EBITDA uplift of approximately $15,000,000 in Q2 versus anticipated levels. Product upgrades to already fielded units can be lumpy and are difficult to predict quarter to quarter.

Speaker 4

So we project future new shipment license revenues at lower levels than we saw in the quarter. As a reminder, the unevenness of growth can often be driven by customer budget cycles. DAT adjusted EBITDA was $57,000,000 up 13% compared to $15,000,000 in the second quarter of fiscal 'twenty four reflecting the positive impact of the Trellisware licenses. Overall, we continue to make progress against our fiscal 'twenty five plan. In our Q2, we generated good operating performance, particularly in aviation and tactical networking.

Speaker 4

We had record awards with focus on aviation, information security, tactical networking and space and mission systems. Capital expenditures came in lower than expected and we successfully refinanced our 26 maturities improving our financial flexibility significantly. Moving on to the fiscal 2025 outlook. We are halfway through the year and are maintaining our outlook, reflecting solid first half results in our aviation and defense order books, confidence in our competitive position within our market, our backlog and record quarterly award, but also headwinds from OEM related delays of aircraft deliveries, including the impact of the just settled Boeing strike. We continue to expect revenue to be flat to up slightly year over year with year over year adjusted EBITDA growth in the mid single digit.

Speaker 4

We've also provided additional segment level detail in the outlook section of our shareholder letter and slides. For comparison purposes, we also included the catch up portion of benefit from the litigation settlement in fiscal 2024 results. Therefore, our guidance is based on fiscal 2024 revenue of 4,470,000,000 dollars and adjusted EBITDA of $1,488,000,000 We now expect capital expenditures in fiscal 2025 to decline further to a range of $1,300,000,000 to 1,400,000,000 dollars including capitalized interest of approximately $200,000,000 per year, which will decline in future years as we continue placing satellites into service. We continue to expect investments in our satellite network and success based CapEx to exceed 2 thirds of our total capital spend with less than a third associated with other maintenance and general CapEx activities. We are focused on reducing total capital expenditures, including the maintenance portions and this will be a key focus of our planning and reporting processes going forward.

Speaker 4

Now looking ahead to fiscal 'twenty six, we continue to expect year over year revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth. Our 2 year CapEx number remains net neutral, so cash flow through the end of fiscal 'twenty six is unchanged. We're also in the midst of our annual multi year strategic planning process and we want to complete that work before providing any more granular guidance on the quarterly progression for fiscal 'twenty six. Our strategic planning cycle goes beyond creating a financial outlook. It addresses our operational priorities, capital spending, competitive positioning and portfolio optionality.

Speaker 4

We are very focused on developing a financial profile that unlocks greater value in both our government and commercial services businesses. We're continuing to work on each of the areas Mark mentioned earlier in the call to enhance strategic optionality, improve cash flow and optimize return on capital. In closing, 2nd quarter operational performance was quite good, capturing our share of large and growing markets, and we're focused on improving operational and capital productivity. We're strengthening our capital structure, and we have a long runway of opportunities ahead. With that, I'd like to hand the call back over to Mark.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Gary. So at this point, we'll be happy to take questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Your first question comes from the line of Edison Yu of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking our questions. First, I want to start with on the first page of the shareholder letter, I mean, it's mentioned several times you're evaluating all these, I guess, proposals, ideas on the structure, capital structure, financial structure. You had this teach in not that long ago about the assets in the AT. Can you perhaps comment on if you've gotten external strategic or financial interest in some of these assets?

Speaker 5

And if there has been, have there been any sort of structural reasons as to why no sort of transaction has occurred?

Speaker 2

Okay. So one is, it's actually not unusual for us to get inquiries all the time on a number of our assets. So that part is not unusual. I think and there is no specific structural blocks, roadblocks or bottlenecks to any transaction. But what we're really the main thing we're trying to say is we're just trying to be prudent and open minded about the best way to work with our assets.

Speaker 2

And one of the things that we are assessing is just working on what the valuation is for them. And fortunately, one of the good things is a lot of those government assets, especially have been they've just been improving a lot recently. We've anticipated some of that. It's good to see it come to fruition. And one of the things we're doing is just trying to factor that into how we work with them.

Speaker 2

But there is no I think that the point of being open minded is just to say exactly that, that we're open minded.

Speaker 5

Understood. And then just a follow-up on the L band side. Can you perhaps give us a sense of how you're thinking about that landscape? And obviously, we've got quite a few efforts from a lot of players now on B2D. You have a lot of outbound.

Speaker 5

And so is the I guess, is there a vision that you may monetize some of that? Would you keep it all yourselves? Would you do both? How do you sort of think about just maximizing the value potential there?

Speaker 2

Okay. Yes. So the first thing ourselves and with partners and that one of the things that we did in that area, which we think is a good step is forming the mobile satellite operators, the Mobile Satellite Services Association. And the theory behind that, which we've talked about and I've talked about it in public addresses is that what we expect is that the capacity, airtime costs, speeds that can be delivered to terrestrial cell phones through these non terrestrial networks or what's called direct to device is really going to be dependent on the amount of spectrum that's available there. And the main thing that we've been working on is promoting identifying and promoting both the open standards, which are primarily the 3 gsPP standards around first, narrowband IoT and then the 5 gs new radio combined with an open architecture system and then kind of extending the concepts that have worked well in terrestrial mobile networks, which is to have multi tenant infrastructure.

Speaker 2

So that part, I think we're making progress on it. I think the other things that are becoming evident, there's another approach that people are pursuing, which is to reuse terrestrial spectrum. I think that the I think that what the bottlenecks are and reuse the terrestrial network, a net terrestrial spectrum has primarily impact on other terrestrial spectrum through there's a lot of discussion around what's called out of band emissions constraints and the amount of spectrum. And so what we think is happening is I think there's become more awareness about the value of the licensed MSS spectrum in this space. And so I think that's good for us.

Speaker 2

Certainly, I think that creates options for people that are good that have spectrum. We have uses for our spectrum that are really, really important and valuable. And we've said multiple times, we don't intend at all to diminish the application of that. But what we are looking at are ways to augment our augment space systems in a way that preserves, brings along the existing services, but also creates opportunity for these NTM and D2D services. And I think other MSS holders are looking at similar strategies for theirs.

Speaker 2

And all that would be enhanced by this concept of open multi network infrastructure. I think in the main I think that one of the things that is good for us is you can see there's been a lot more discussion and a lot of speculation recently about the value of such MSS spectrum, how it might be applied. I think we're looking to do it in a way that is open architecture, mostly non exclusive in a way that just makes the service available to terrestrial partners. And we've gotten really good feedback on that. I think it's going to take us a few more quarters to be able to solidify that.

Speaker 2

The other thing that we're aiming to do with these multi tenant infrastructure approaches is to be able to do that and still achieve our objectives of consistently declining CapEx budgets. And that's I think that that's again, that's one of the things that terrestrial carriers have been able to do through multi tenant shared infrastructure

Speaker 6

as well. So

Speaker 2

we kind of feel like all that stuff is coming together. Great. Appreciate it.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ric Prentiss of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody.

Speaker 4

Hi, Ric.

Speaker 7

Hi. And welcome, Gary. Look forward to working with you. Couple of questions on my side, I want to probe a little further. On the actively evaluating alternatives topic, can you let us know kind of what stage you're at?

Speaker 7

Have you hired bankers for the different areas? And when you mentioned that while those businesses are both delivering growth and increasing potential, are you talking about core and DAT there? But first question is on the actively evaluating kind of what stage and where we're at?

Speaker 2

So right as I said, right now, we're just considering and evaluating alternative architectures. Those structures are going to be influenced pretty fair amount by what's going on in the businesses. And we were anticipating a pretty strong quarter that was going to help set the direction for these businesses and we got it. So I think that's helpful. There's quite a one of the things we mentioned, there's we like about these businesses is they're pretty differentiated.

Speaker 2

They're very core to both U. S. Government and international governments use of space for national security and sovereignty. We think they're really valuable. So we're not I think the point is we're just want people to know that being open minded as opposed to fixed and parochial about how we work with them.

Speaker 2

And we're going to we are certainly aware that if you look at say what reasonable some of the parts valuation would be, maybe we're not getting full value for those. So that's what's causing us to think about other alternatives. But we don't I would say we have not made any decisions. Those businesses are we think are going to continue to grow. So we're just going to be shareholder focused.

Speaker 2

That's the main thing.

Speaker 7

Okay. Sounds somewhat early stage then also just recognizing the sum of the parts and wanting good quarters and then kind of let people know you're interested in hearing that.

Speaker 2

In multiple ways, yes.

Speaker 7

Sure. Makes sense. And Gary, I think you mentioned that you're in the midst of a multi year plan before getting granular on quarterly information in fiscal 'twenty six. Is that an illusion to kind of the timing of positive free cash flow given one there's been some CapEx slip, but there could also be some other items out there?

Speaker 4

Yes. Well, first, Rick, let's I just want to make sure we don't bury the lead on the idea that the outlook is unchanged as we look across the 2 years. We did move $100,000,000 of CapEx from fiscal 2025 into fiscal 2026. And we do want the benefit of that process before we get more granular on how the timing looks. Additionally, because we think it's going to be a good opportunity to continue looking at how we optimize our spend.

Speaker 4

And let me just add a little bit of color to that. For things that we see as customer critical, we really want to challenge and see if we can accelerate some of those to drive contribution sooner. For things that don't fall into that bucket, we want to challenge both the level of spend and the timing. When we can move things out, we really get 2 sources of value. 1st, time value of money, which I obviously don't need to explain to anybody on the call, but a lot of time the spend also has what I know is an operating tail, which means as we construct, the operating expenses start to spool up too.

Speaker 4

And that's non productive operating expense while we're building it. So as we go through this process, we just want to give ourselves the opportunity to a, get better information on how things are going to play out, but also an opportunity to just go back and revisit those assumptions for the opportunities I just described.

Speaker 7

Okay. Last one for me is on the aviation side and flight connectivity. Big debate out there, airlines seem to be choosing sides of technology or orbits. How should we think about LEOs versus GEO and the competitive dynamic in commercial aviation?

Speaker 2

Okay. I think from an airlines perspective and the airlines we're dealing with, I don't think they think of orbits first. I think what they think of is what's the business model going to be. And when we first entered the business and our first customers offered free service to passengers including streaming, I think one of the things that a lot of the airlines realized pretty quickly was if every airline ended up paying for free Internet service, then every airline would have additional expenses and no airline would have any competitive advantage relative to what they had now. So I think that the main thing that the airlines have been focused on is a business model that and that business model has to be in the context not only of what they're doing, but what is the field doing as well.

Speaker 2

And so the main thing that we've been hearing with airlines is, okay, how do we what are the opportunities to differentiate? Almost none of the airlines expect that the way they differentiate is going to be is going to last 5 years or 10 years. They're really looking at how they differentiate on some continuous basis. And then low latency, which is the main advantage of LEO is a good thing. It's one of the reasons that we're adding low latency to our maritime service.

Speaker 2

We're working with Lightspeed to do the same thing for Ka band. I think that then the issue is really going to be differentiation. And also I can tell you the other thing that's really become more and more evident, especially for us, I think in terms of numbers of planes that we have, what's becoming more and more evident is people just expect it to work. And so the real focus becomes on the 1% or 2% of the time that it doesn't. I tell you that's where a lot of the focus is and that can be for quite a variety of reasons, especially as you scale up.

Speaker 2

So I think those are kind of the things that we're having that the conversations we're having with airlines are. And a lot of them, I think more of the if you think of market segmentation, I think it's going to be less around LEO versus GEO and more about business model, integration with entertainment, what are the roles of entertainment and connectivity, what are the monetization strategies there, are there things that are done to help monetize, kind of friction do they create. Those are I can tell you those are the real the main issues. I think that everybody is dealing with in this space, including I think that what we're seeing is less and less focus on just the pipe and more and more on these issues of integration and monetization.

Speaker 7

That's helpful.

Speaker 2

Assuming that the pipe is good. I just see that it's just sort of taking the pipe for granted part. Right. Thanks.

Speaker 7

Have a

Speaker 2

good day. Sure. Thanks Rick.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Sebastiano Petti of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hi, thanks for taking the question. I guess maybe perhaps just following up on Rick's question and to your comments, Mark. With UAL choosing their pony in the race or deciding to go free, I mean, how does that now permeate through the ecosystem, right? Obviously, one of your original partners, Chip Blue, has kind of been on that path for a while. Delta has discussed it.

Speaker 8

But this seems like a topic that we've discussed across commercial aviation IFC for the last couple of years. And

Speaker 2

so what are the

Speaker 8

next steps from here perhaps maybe the best way to put it in light of the UAL announcement? And then thinking about do you see what is the feasibility or the inclination perhaps in some sort of hybrid LEO GEO in flight connectivity solution similar to what you're doing with Nexus Wave and Maritime? Is that something that could make sense over time? Why or why not? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Okay. Yes. And just, could you when you said what are the best steps in light of the UAL announcement, are you talking about for us or other airlines or

Speaker 4

Next steps.

Speaker 8

Yes, I mean ecosystem wide, UAL has now made their decision to be a partner with StarLink and kind of go I think where do you see the chessboard? How do you see the chessboard perhaps playing out from here? And potential next steps or additional how does the strategies evolve from here in your point

Speaker 2

of view from an airline level? Yes. I think the so the number one I'd say a lot of the ingredients have been evident over the last 10 years. So the number one issue for a lot of airlines is monetization, right. It's like what they don't want to see is a substantial new expense without some value associated with it.

Speaker 2

So well, I guess and the way to put it is, I'm just going to give you an example is that one answer was when free Wi Fi was first introduced at scale, it was, okay, I'd rather fly in that airline. And so maybe they could get a premium in ticket prices, right. So the measure might have been revenue per passenger seat mile as an example, that that might be an example of a way that it was monetized. But if multiple airlines have 3, then it's hard to get a premium on ticket price as an example. So then people are looking for other ways to differentiate.

Speaker 2

And I think that that is a big part of what's going on now is understanding the different ways to differentiate and how to capture those. And there are quite a if you just think about what you see when you fly on different airlines, you'll see everything from advertisements to promotions by telecom carriers, promotions by content providers. There are different tiers of service, could be free texting, could be complete free Internet, could be Internet with or without streaming. I think that what people are what the airlines are looking for are what are the ways to monetize, who, what data is available. It's just that's what it's turning into from our perspective.

Speaker 2

And I think that, you're also seeing, different airlines take different strategies about how much of those things they want to do in house, how much of them they outsource, how much and whether or not they have seat back displays, whether the role of seat backs with connectivity and entertainment. I would say that when we started, we were the first to do free and to include streaming. It was really just about what is the capability of Internet service. What has become about more about now is what is the monetization and differentiation strategy. And so we've ended up adding quite a lot of software engineering capability, integration with entertainment, integration with 3rd parties in order to do those features.

Speaker 2

And I can tell you that and it's not there's no known destination because as things become successful, other airlines imitate them, whether they do them themselves or they have third parties do them. So that is most of the discussion that we have. And I just I think it's certainly, you can have a good going back to the LEO part, LEO is really good for low latency and fast responsiveness. Only a portion of the bandwidth used involves that. And I would say that from the airlines perspective, that's one way to differentiate, but the monetization way is another.

Speaker 2

Then from our perspective, what we're seeing is that it's definitely possible to integrate LEO and Jio, or any multiple any different orbits in a way that creates effect the same effect for passengers. So the thing and just to put things in perspective, the thing we have a ton of data about usage, the thing that has that often turns out to be a bottleneck on usage is when large numbers of planes are in the same area. And that's the place where GEO really shines. The fact that the vast majority of bandwidth consumed is on streaming may and that streaming is not latency sensitive, that's what creates economic incentives around combining LEO and GEO. So those are the things we're doing.

Speaker 2

I can tell you that among our customers, there's a lot of enthusiasm for that. And the first place, we brought it to we brought it to market is in maritime. And I think the effects that we're creating for customers are they really can't tell the difference between that and an Altria solution. I think the place they will be able to tell the difference is in the very high demand areas, which are usually ports for maritime or airports for airlines and sometimes those overlap. So this is part of what we've been saying for quite a while.

Speaker 2

I think that we're seeing that bear out now that the some of the like OneWeb is at least in initial services. I think we'll see the same thing with Lightspeed as well. And what we're going to what we're aiming for is to integrate the 2 and we think that there is a way to integrate them that's better than either one on its own. That's what we're aiming for. Does that make does that answer your question?

Speaker 2

Yes. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mike.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Simon Flannery of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Thanks a lot. Good afternoon. I was wondering if you could just update us on any new developments on the VYATHA-three F2 and F3. I see the commercial timing is unchanged. Any more details around launch timing or any other milestones that you've hit?

Speaker 9

And also where you think you're going to deploy the capacity going forward? And then just following up on the UAL question, could you help us size the potential exposure and the timing? It sounds like United is keen to move aircraft onto the new system quite quickly. So we'd love to get how you see that going given the contracts you have with United. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Okay. On the new satellites, the reason we put the roadmap in the way we did is because the in service gate is really what drives our ability to monetize the satellites. The so that those are unchanged now. It really as we go through this, there is actually a lot of work involved in holding to those schedules and working with our suppliers. So there is work going on.

Speaker 2

Some of those within the and this is the reason that we've focused on the in service dates is that there are opportunities to some things go faster, we can benefit from that, some things go slower, we have the opportunity to try to accelerate other parts of the program, maybe at additional expense or at additional resources. So far, we've been able to hold to the in service states. And I think that's how we're thinking about it. I think that's the way that a good way for investors and customers to think about it as well. But we are making good progress on them.

Speaker 2

The main for going back to your other questions, Flight 2, the main things that we've been doing, we've got we did a bit talked about this before, very extensive analysis of what the failure anomaly mode was on Flight 1, come up with 2 main mitigation approaches. 1 is a way to prevent the failure mode from occurring at all and the other one is to beef up the structure in a way that even if that failure mode were to occur, the structure would still deploy effectively nominally. So the main things that we've seen that have been good have been the implementation of those corrective actions. So that's the main thing. The spacecraft itself is basically all done and in storage just waiting for the reflectors to be installed.

Speaker 2

Flight 3 is getting close to the same situation where we're just waiting for the refractors to be installed. The main plan that we've discussed is to put Flight 2 over the Americas and Flight 3 over Asia Pacific. Okay. And then on the United, we're not going I think that we would refer people to United for their plans on deploying StarLink. They have said that they're going to go through an evaluation process to get there.

Speaker 2

It would be inappropriate for us to comment on that. We are continuing to grow airplanes in service that we had previously given a target of about 4,200 commercial aircraft in service at the end of this fiscal year. We should be it will be very close now. We had substantial margin before, but given the ongoing delivery delays compounded by the strike, it's going to be close, but we think we're going to be there. We still see and we have about 1500 ish planes in backlog beyond that.

Speaker 2

So we're going to continue to grow. We have factored in inputs from United into our forecast, but it would be inappropriate for us to describe what that is for us. But we see ongoing growth at a good clip for the next several years. Thanks Mark. Did that cover all your questions?

Speaker 9

Yes. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Crawford of B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Just continuing on the when we can expect in service at Flight 3 and Flight 2 for ViaSat-three, just I appreciate the pictures you've provided us in August and now with this report today on the ViaSat satellite roadmap. But when would be the earliest that Flight 3, these satellites each could go in service at this point?

Speaker 2

What we've said is mid to late 2025 for Flight 3 and late 2025 for Flight 2. And that's I think right now we're not just that's about I think that's a good range for us to get at this point.

Speaker 6

Yes, I guess I'm a little confused on that because from the picture it looks like Flight 2 is further along, its final ground test stage, but Fireside F3 is going to catch up and pass it?

Speaker 2

Yes, so Flight 2, it has to do with the launch vehicle and the specific mission. Flight 2 has a longer orbit raising time than Flight 3.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you. And then, Mark, after ViaSat-three, you're talking now today about maybe some multi tenant infrastructure. I think when you and I talked a couple of months ago, you were talking about maybe just simpler, faster to build satellites, maybe even proliferated geo. Is there any to diffuse risk and enable more agility?

Speaker 6

Is that all part and parcel of what you're thinking or have thoughts evolve more?

Speaker 2

Okay. Those are 2 different approaches and therefore 2 different purposes. The area where we're getting good interest in the multi tenant environment is in the D2D, the mobile application. And that's really because of the standards and the open architecture that's available. So, if you look at the and again, it's these 3 gsPP standards that are we think are going to be really a lot of the foundation of the next of these non terrestrial networks.

Speaker 2

So the approach that multiple and just to be clear, I mean right now, if you look at the forecasts, there are good opportunities and existing opportunities for mobile satellite services that are not 3 gsPP standard, but the 3 gsPP standard modes because the market is that the phones that can use those is so large, that's what's expected to dominate. So what we've described is essentially a satellite architecture and that can work multi orbit that allows think of it as just to use the types of services that are in now, like remember Iridium has its own satellite, its own infrastructure, its own handsets, its own waveform, Globalstar has its own, Inmarsat has its own, RIYA has its own. But when you go to these 3 gsPP standards, you should end up with devices that could work on the RF bands of each of them and they also if they are using the same standards and the same network architecture, you could make any of those devices work on any of those constellations, at which point if the market is as big as what it looks like, it would make sense just like it did in terrestrial for operators to share infrastructure.

Speaker 2

It would allow much more it should allow better return on capital for everybody. So that's where we're getting traction on that one and we've come up with some pretty creative and innovative space and ground designs that allow operators to do both the existing MSS services and to improve those MSS services, much higher speeds, lower cost airtime and then also to have the D2D modes to it. So that's what we're doing kind of think of that in the mobile satellite bands. In the broadband space, the point that you raised that we have been working towards is, can we get, think of it as some fraction of the function of the throughput and functional capability of ViaSat-three satellite had an equivalent fraction of the capital cost. And one of the things that we've seen, even though I think we do think that ViaSat-three satellites are going to do what they're intended to do.

Speaker 2

The first one, just once you account for the mechanical deployment issues works just the way it's supposed to, it's pretty clear that the large satellite manufacturers are it's something of a struggle to it's exotic to build these. They're kind of like what they call exotic or exquisite technology. So what we've been looking at are much simpler technologies that would let us do more like what you're describing, which is a proliferated geo approach. And that is I think there are others that are looking at low cost geo. The thing that's unique about what we're trying to do is to get much, much higher capacity and much, much higher economic yield per capital dollar for those.

Speaker 2

What we're finding is quite a few other satellite operators that are very interested in the same things. So that's what we're doing is we're exploring with them technical approaches and the economics of them and that's the second approach that you described in geo that we're working towards. And then the other point I would make is we're which is really goes to the question that was asked before is, can we do that in a way that gives us these hybrid LEO and GEO architectures that allows us to compete with the pure LEOs, but in a way that's really well suited for mobility.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you. And I have a last question. I think I know the answer, but last question is with the, I think, 5 fold increase in bits you're going to be able to deploy once you launch these 2 ViaSat-three satellites, is there any change in your belief that you will be able to deploy this ample demand for you to deliver managed services and bandwidth to customers with this capacity you're bringing online?

Speaker 2

There is a lot of demand and I think one of the ways you can tell that is even these LEOs that have put out really big numbers about what they're going to deliver, don't deliver that all the time, right? Or they struggle to get to reach the peak speeds all the time or in the highest demand places. So we see a very large amount of demand. That capacity is one of the ways to differentiate. There's a little bit of diminishing returns.

Speaker 2

Do you need how much high definition do you really need on an airplane? But right now, there's lots of people who are streaming on an airplane in airport there's a ton of demand in those situations.

Speaker 6

All right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of

Speaker 2

Go ahead, Nick. Sorry.

Operator

Yes. The next question comes from the line of Chris Kulte of Kulte Space. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Thank you. Mark, so I just want to follow-up. You did mention when you were talking, I think about direct to device about a concept of a multi tenant satellite, which is that part of what you were just discussing in the strategy, which I thought was more focused on the Satcom side of the business rather than direct to device or do you see those 2 as kind of 1 in the same?

Speaker 2

So the multi tenant, just to be clear, think of so when we talk about multi tenant, simple way to think about it, think of it like cell towers that are multi tenant, right. And they're designed to cover the entire range of spectrum and to support whatever the network generations are and the backhaul that are required to support those. People have done multi tenant satellites before, think of like condo sats in the geo environment and you can have multipurpose I mean even Iridium did condo sats with ADS B for instance in MSS. So, the thing so we're trying to make a distinction between in the direct to device space is really business model as well as the technology. In the geo space, things might do might look a little more like condosats or shared satellites, but don't really go to the same extent as the direct to device would because it's going to be so dominated by these 5 gs standards.

Speaker 10

Okay. And for that, I'll call it the CondoSat business model, Where are you in terms of customer outreach and basically building a pipeline on that? And likewise on the flip side, I think that's a bit of a distinct supply chain, I would think from what you currently source and what sort of hurdles, if any, are you seeing in that effort?

Speaker 2

No, I would say the best examples, some of the best examples of that really revolve more around network standards than technology. And so we've done this pretty successfully for quite a long time with partners in Asia Pacific and in Latin America. We have several more already in the works where we would share networking features and pretty much on a demand design basis where they can support their national needs, but really work with us for getting access to different verticals or for global roaming. And we're finding more we actually have quite a few of those types of arrangements in the works using existing satellites. Some of them are ours, some of them are others.

Speaker 10

Got you. And some hopefully rule just quickies, I'll just be directed. You remove any United aircraft from your previous order backlog. If not, can you give us a sense of what sort of closure you have given the announcement with United on the 1,000 aircraft that they're sending over to StarLink?

Speaker 2

No. Okay. So we're not going to it would be presumptuous of us to do that. I think you should I think people should talk to United about what their plans are for each of services that they have. What I can tell you is we will bake those into our forecast, our understanding of them.

Speaker 2

We're not going to break them out separately, but the forecast that we give for airplane count will reflect not just United, but all of our airline customers plans.

Speaker 1

Sorry, Chris, we're running we're starting to run long. So I think you've had your more than one and follow-up question. So, May, can you go ahead and move to the last questioner, please?

Operator

Yes, sure. So we have one last question from Ryan Coons. Your line is now open.

Speaker 11

Great, thanks. I'll keep it quick here. You talked about decelerating broadband headwinds. I'm not sure your numbers in services really reflects that in fixed and other in the quarter. I wonder if you can maybe unpack your thoughts there on is there a declining competitive threat on fixed you're feeling from Leo?

Speaker 2

Okay. So fixed, the main things are the main ingredients there and it's been the same thing as one is moving bandwidth from fixed applications into aviation. The other one which is sort of an industry wide issue for everybody is that growing per user bandwidth demand requirements. So if we have a if we're not adding bandwidth from our satellites, then we're probably going to go down and we've shown this effect before is that as user bandwidth expands then the number of subscribers you can support goes down for the same amount of bandwidth. So those are the 2 things.

Speaker 2

I think from a year over year perspective, the dollar amount on the fixed decline is decelerated.

Speaker 11

Got it. So you're saying it's part of your plan to move bandwidth anyway toward mobile and IFC. So the impact is less, even though it stands out as a double digit decliner in the Yes.

Speaker 2

I mean, some of the bandwidth that was contributing to fixed revenues now contributing to mobile revenue or government revenue. Got it. All right. Thanks. We'll wrap it up.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Ryan.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mark.

Operator

That concludes our Q and A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Mark Dankberg, CEO for the closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Okay. Well, thanks very much everybody for participating in our call and for sticking around in a little bit excess. We appreciate all the interest and we look forward to speaking again next quarter. Thanks.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Viasat Q2 2025
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