Earnings Labs

Viasat, Inc. (VSAT)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 9, 2016

$58.07

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to ViaSat's Fiscal Year 2016 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Your host for today's call is Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Dankberg. Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. And I've got with me Rick Baldridge, our President and Chief Operating Officer; Shawn Duffy, our CFO; and Keven Lippert, our General Counsel. And before we start, Keven will provide our Safe Harbor disclosure. Keven K. Lippert - Secretary, Vice President & General Counsel: Thanks, Mark. As you know, this discussion will contain forward-looking statements. This is a reminder that factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Additional information concerning these factors is contained in our SEC filings including our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Copies are available from the SEC or from our website. With that said, back to you, Mark. Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Thanks. So we'll be referring to slides that are available over the Web. And I'll start with some highlights and some news, and then Shawn will discuss our consolidated and segment level financial results. And then I'll give some additional details and some color on our strategic initiatives and thinking. And then we'll summarize our outlook and take questions. So besides our earnings, we've got news on three important new topics. They are an update to our ViaSat-2 launch plan, our starting construction on the ViaSat-3 global constellation, and a new strategic partnership in Europe with Eutelsat. So I'll start with the financial highlights and then come back to the other three. And our results show we're making good progress on increasing the value of our ViaSat-1 bandwidth in the satellite services segment and increasingly in…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by. Your conference call will begin momentarily. Again, please remain on the line. Your conference call will begin momentarily. Thank you. Speakers, welcome back. Please continue. Shawn Lynn Duffy - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: We'll pick up to where we were in commercial networks. Our revenues were down year-over-year as we complete the NBN Co. infrastructure project, as well as declines in terminal sales and antenna systems product sales. However, with an expected service launch in April 2016, we began seeing new consumer terminal orders from NBN at the end of the third quarter. As Mark mentioned earlier, our ViaSat-3 activities are well underway, which drove our Q3 segment R&D expenses to double the level we incurred last year. I'll provide a bit more context around these impacts later but, in the near term, we do expect to see a pretty significant uptick in development activity supporting our ViaSat-3 satellites as we close out FY 2016 and continuing for the next several quarters. Slide 6 shows revenue and adjusted EBITDA performance for our fiscal 2016 year-to-date period compared to the same period last year. Comparisons with the prior period, however, are skewed by the aggregate $40 million earnings impact of the Loral settlement realized in Q2 fiscal 2015. Just to recap, in the second quarter of last year, we booked a one-time benefit to product revenues of $21 million, and a one-time G&A credit of $19 million as a result of the settlement. I won't spend much time on this slide as many of the revenue drivers are the same as those in the quarterly comparison on the previous slide. But I would like to highlight the 16% growth in adjusted EBITDA year-to-date to $250 million, excluding the Q2 FY 2015 Loral…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from Mike Crawford with B. Riley and Company. Your line is now open, please go ahead. Mike Crawford - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Thank you. Mark, can you just try to illustrate a little bit about capacity issue, how much capacity on a satellite you would need to provide service for, say, a certain speed to a certain number of devices on, say, planes in the area? Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. So, yeah, what you need to do when you do that is you have to take into account the route structure of the airline because most of the airlines tend to have focal points in New York, Chicago, Boston – New York, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles as examples, Houston. And it turns out you need in each of those markets at peak times several hundreds of megabits per second to serve even less than 100 people per aircraft in those markets. So that, when you look at lots of even these high throughput satellites have less than 100 megabits per second in those markets. So it's only a fraction of what you'd need, even to support, say, less than 1,000 aircraft. So it's a lot. Mike Crawford - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Okay. That's helpful. Maybe take it another way. So if let's say ViaSat-2 has 300 gigabits per second capacity. With a satellite like that and type level of service you envision to provide, is there a cap on amount of commercial aircraft you think you could provide in a given area with the ViaSat-2 architected service? Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: No. If you look at – one of the things we've said and remember, what's really important…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew DeGasperi with Macquarie Capital. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Andrew DeGasperi - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Great, thanks. I wanted to get maybe some additional color from either Mark or Shawn, on why did you guys form a JV as opposed to maybe offering the service directly in Europe? And maybe can you highlight why is it important to have a wholesale partner there? Thanks. Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay, yeah. So one is, there are a number of benefits that we get by working with Eutelsat. One is Eutelsat has a very strong position in Europe. They have an inventory of orbital spots that are a good resource for expansion. They have strong regulatory and landing rights positions throughout Europe. And, as we've seen in the U.S., there's a very high congruence between the people that have satellite Internet and people that have satellite TV. So working with the leading satellite Internet – satellite TV provider is a strong position. The other thing that worked really well for us in the U.S. was we acquired the WildBlue business and it gave us a running start in our retail business, which has turned out to be a big driver of the financial success of ViaSat-1. We have a much proportion of retail customers. Our ARPU has grown substantially. So the big things that we get here with Eutelsat are the ability to start creating a retail network around the existing KA-SAT satellite and have that in place at the time that we launch a new satellite, build on good orbital position and to work with them on better leveraging the synergies between satellite TV and satellite Internet. Could we do those things without the joint venture? Yes, we could. We just feel like this is a much more expedient – it's a good low-risk return tradeoff, and we like working with Eutelsat. They're a good partner for us. Andrew DeGasperi - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Quilty with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Chris D. Quilty - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Thanks. Just to follow up on the prior question, what specifically did you invest in? I think you mentioned $103 million in terms of assets or investment capital that you own in that joint venture. Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. So the number we put out was €130 million, and what we have – just to be clear, we have a framework agreement with Eutelsat. We'll be creating two new entities, essentially a retail entity, which will be new, which we will have 51% of and then a wholesale entity which we'll build around the existing KA-SAT. They will have 51% of that. So the €130 million essentially gets us 49% of the wholesale business, which is the existing KA-SAT business and infrastructure. And that includes the satellite itself, all the ground network infrastructure, all of the networking equipment that goes into making that, as well as 49% of the cash flow associated with that business. Chris D. Quilty - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Got you. And for Shawn, how should we expect that to flow through the P&L and pop up on the balance sheet? Shawn Lynn Duffy - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. I would say that we're still in the early work, as Mark mentioned, to completing out the joint venture and closing the deal. So I would say we're going to update you guys, as we get closer to all of the financial details. The best way to think about it is we're effectively going to get the 50% economic benefit of the combined group.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Spinola with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Andrew C. Spinola - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. I'd like to ask specifically about your guidance for Q4 and fiscal 2017. It's pretty significant growth in EBITDA, both sequentially and year-over-year considering the $30 million headwind you referenced, and I'm just wondering, when I look across your segments, it looks like the biggest driver of that's got to be in ARPU and, potentially, I guess maybe planes coming online. And could you talk about the backlog of planes coming online and your view on how ARPU can grow in Q4 and next year at these levels, continuing at these levels? Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay, so yeah. On the planes, think of it as multiple dimensions. One is adding planes. We've been doing that pretty steadily. And I think, not going to comment right now on the backlog because – stay tuned, we think it's going to grow pretty significantly. I think, though, the other really important elements that we're seeing are more people per airplane, so that's steadily rising. It's just like adding more airplanes. If you weren't growing the penetration, the only way you're going to grow is by airplanes. But if you grow in penetration, that's a really good way to grow. And then the other one is more bandwidth usage per person. And that's especially true with the in-flight streaming, which is a very, very popular option. So that's a very good growth opportunity for us. I think people tend to underestimate that. On the ARPU side, the way we're getting growth there is we're offering new plans. We've had – for instance, this 25 megabit per second speed boost offering has been really popular. We just introduced that. And then we've also been offering plans, if you look on our website, plans that let people use more bandwidth in off hours. They're generally pretty attractive. They're a little higher priced, but people get a lot more utility out of them. And then we're offering some enhanced home services care opportunities as well. Those are the things that will drive ARPU. And all those things will be manifested in satellite services EBITDA. And then on the government side, probably, the biggest driver for us will be as the aircraft that we've been outfitting with Ka-band terminals start using Ka-band bandwidth, that's going to be an important factor as well. Richard A. Baldridge - President & Chief Operating Officer: Just like we did in the WildBlue where we actually were turning down customers and growing EBITDA in earnings, just from a cost efficiency standpoint, we're doing that over this next year to 18 months.

Andrew C. Spinola - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Understood. Could you possibly give us a general magnitude of how much your ARPU is in the aviation business, maybe, on a year-over-year comparison? Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, the one thing we'd say, we've used this comparison about a year and half ago where we said think of each airplane as like 100 subscribers, 100 consumers, and it's actually, even though consumer ARPU has risen since then, the airplane usage has grown even faster. So we're not there yet, but it's getting to be where you could think of it as more like double that. Think of it as closer to 150 to 200 passengers.

Andrew C. Spinola - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Got it. And just a question... Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: 150 to 200 consumers, sorry.

Andrew C. Spinola - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Understood. Just a question on your CapEx outlook table or chart, rather, in the presentation: the CapEx for ViaSat-2 that goes into fiscal 2018, 2019, 2020, is that the ground network investments? Or I guess the point of my question is does this table include your terminal CapEx? Shawn Lynn Duffy - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: That is just the ground infrastructure and everything to bring the network live. We do have some additional CapEx for expansion of the network over that time for ViaSat-2. So CPE is kind of a separate (01:01:23) so we kind of think of that as success-based CapEx. And so that's not reflected in that chart.

Andrew C. Spinola - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Got it. And just one last quick one for me, the press release with the joint ventures with Eutelsat talks about trying to potentially procure incremental capacity in advance of ViaSat-3. I'm not aware of any Ka-band capacity over Europe. Are you considering using Ku-band capacity or how could you go about that? Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: No. We're just thinking about some sort of think of it as quick reaction Ka-band capacity, which would be along the lines of, although not necessarily this, but along the lines of the flexible broadband system that we're doing with Boeing using their 702SPs. The construction schedule on those are pretty short. So that would be an example of the way we could bring interim capacity. Richard A. Baldridge - President & Chief Operating Officer: It could be that. It could be a Ka-band payload on another satellite. It could be any one of those things.

Andrew C. Spinola - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Chris Quilty with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Chris D. Quilty - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Thanks. Just a follow-up: You had mentioned that the switching from the Falcon Heavy to the Ariane 5, your capital budget is still in place. But generally an Ariane 5 is going to cost you $100 million to $120 million more than what you were paying for the Falcon Heavy. So were there other puts and takes in the program where you were able to produce savings to maintain the budget? Richard A. Baldridge - President & Chief Operating Officer: Yeah. I think Ariane had a hole in their manifest. And we were able to grab it. And so we think we got a good price. And the insurance cost, our estimates for the insurance between the two, just given that there was such an early flight on the Falcon Heavy, was much higher. So when you take into consideration the two factors, we're within the estimate that we had. Chris D. Quilty - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Got you. Also, the press release you had out today mentioned something about integrating your Ku-band service with Rockwell Collins. Can you elaborate on that? Is that merging or selling the Yonder business or what was that referencing? Mark D. Dankberg - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Operational (01:03:37) It's just a way – think of really what's led the way on our in-flight connectivity for general aviation and commercial aero has been – think of it as passenger cabin usage. And so this is just an example of ways that we're looking into flight operational or cockpit type data. So that would just be an application on those same aircraft.…