Viasat (NAS: VSAT) - Is there space for Viasat?
Warning: 25-30 minute read | Analysis of Baupost's 6th Largest Holding
Hi everyone,
Viasat is such a unique investment opportunity. I not only believe that the firm can significantly grow its bottom line through the launch of its third generation constellation, but their defense business also has a near-term catalyst that can potentially double investor’s returns.
As a quick introduction, Viasat has three reported segments, but their two core businesses are satellite service and government systems. For satellite services, Viasat launches satellites 22,000 miles above the equator into space to connect the previously unconnected. Viasat launches a new satellite about every four years, and next year will include the launch of their new satellite, Viasat-3. For the first time, they’ll be launching 3 satellites of the same generation in order to get global coverage (40% of global consumers don’t have access to the internet). Their total capacity in the air will increase ~8x while per satellite capacity will increase ~3x with the Viasat-3. Satellite internet is important for rural consumers all across the world that don’t have access to cable / fiber, and will likely not have access to those services since the economics don’t work out.
Airlines, ships, oil rigs, among others are also important use cases. Echostar (1.1M customers) and Viasat (~600K customers) run a duopoly in this space. However, low earth satellite competitors like Starlink / Oneweb are slowly coming to fruition. These new competitors have a value proposition of providing lower latency services at a supposedly lower cost. Based on my research, I believe that the company’s cost per megabit per second is the most important factor in the markets that these players are targeting. The simple thesis for this segment is that I believe Viasat-3 edges out their competitors in this market when evaluated by the cost per megabit per second.
Their defense business is a Tier 2 contractor that has incredible tailwinds like Link16, satellite internet, and cybersecurity.
Viasat may look like a dying company with these newer satellite companies breaking into the space. However, Viasat’s culture is built around the age-old book, “Innovator’s Dilemma”, and its discussion of Disruption Theory. Mark Dankberg, the Chairman of Viasat, created a culture at the 30-year old firm that inverted the concept of being an incumbent and force employees to view themselves as a constant disruptor. Evidence of their disruptive nature includes a ~20% increase in market share in the in-flight connectivity space in 4 years, 40% better cost-advantages to their incumbent competitors, and industry-leading growth in the defense sector. Mark Dankberg seems to have a clear 10+ year investment horizon; his early investments in vertically integrating their satellites are only starting to pay dividends a decade later. Despite being in a duopoly with Echostar, Viasat has been aggressive with capex spending which has resulted in their improved cost economics compared to their duopolistic partner. Viasat got absolutely hammered in 2009 when they announced that they’re moving into the satellite business. Prior to their recent stock market tumble, his long term thinking paid off — Viasat’s returns compounded at 13% between 2009-2019.
They are primarily known for their satellite internet business, but that’s not where the business ends. They have two additional segments — commercial systems and government systems — which have little reliance on this satellite internet business. Only roughly a little more than 60% of their operating profits are from their internet space satellites. In their prized government segment, only 20% of revenue is in satellite internet, but the other 80% and most of the growth is on the hardware side. Below, there’s a quick snapshot of their revenue breakdown. Note, commercial systems will likely always have a negative operating profit since it’s a complementary business to satellite and military services.
Government Systems
This is Viasat’s core asset and cash cow. It’s a 15% revenue growth and ~27% EBITDA segment that’s over a third of their topline. There’s a secret sauce to their government acquisition process that has growing competitive advantages. Viasat’s skilled R&D team aims to find solutions to problems before they become government required mandates. This is fueled not only by their unique culture but by their R&D expertise to identify these holes. From a recent Raymond James Conference, their Chairman noted that over 50% of their products are what they consider “nondevelopment” items (NDI) which are items that have no original mandate for the item. At the conference, they mention that they are sole providers of products that are acquired through the NDI process. There’s little disclosure of NDIs publicly, but management mentioned in a Q4 2018 earnings call that NDIs “yield higher contribution margins”. Additionally, NDIs are attractive for the government and the company given that it’ll be cheaper than the government investing its own R&D into these projects, but the margins are still better than other acquisition processes for the company. No other companies discuss NDIs in their earnings calls, so it’s hard to tell if this is a moat for Viasat. However, their EBITDA margins are in the top decile of Tier 2 Contractors, so NDIs must be providing them significant accretion.
Management’s smart decision two decades ago made them a key player in the lucrative Link16 space. Link 16 is a system that allows multiple domains — helicopters, soldiers, ships, UAVs, and planes — to seamlessly communicate with each other. This grows in importance as things move faster on the battlefield.
They run a duopoly with DataLinks for a radio that is a key backbone of the Link16 network called MIDS. For example, they just got a billion-dollar contract just for the Link16 enabled MIDS radios on the Navy.
They were also the sole Link16 provider for government helicopters.
They are also the first company to be contracted out to create a purpose-built Link16 LEO Satellite for the military. If the LEO satellite test is successful, they’ll potentially be able to get access to tens of billions of dollars.
Based on some of the questions from a webinar, it currently seems like most of the Link16 products are used by special ops but that there’s a lot of interest for expansion within other forces and applications. Link16 has been around for 3-4 decades but previously not thought of as necessary due to things like the size of the terminals, which are slowly getting smaller. The network is a beneficiary of a network effect which means that the more nodes in the battlespace, the better the network gets. It’s important to thicken the network as a fallback option in case the adversary tries to kill off the other nodes in the Link16 Network. Situations evolve in the modern battlefield, so the Link16 Network needs to be wide and dense. This is necessary in order to improve communication in the case of situations where a new, more important target is identified and needs to be redirected. However, if certain areas lack Link16 enabled devices then that data can’t be transmitted to UAVs, other ground troops, and centers outside of the battle. As a result, Viasat, the sole source provider of the Link16 handheld radio, is one of the best current tools to increase the network at cheaper costs than before. The use of the handheld radio is the first time where a ground troop can communicate with their aerial peers at ease using Link16, and it further increases accuracy as the network significantly improves.
Other great tailwinds for the defense business are on satellite internet services for aircraft in the military. This is about a 2-3B TAM for Viasat, and they’re already a great partner with the Airforce. It seems likely to expect more movement in the satellite internet space from the government. They are currently running on decades-old gov-built satellites, but the Space Force has made a clear push for commercialization. It’ll be cheaper for them to acquire than build, and as a result, it’ll make sense to sign on to multiple constellations given the security and cost benefits. Clearly, VSAT is a great player in an even better space.
On valuation, investors should separate out the government business since it’s being clouded up by a lot of one-time costs in the satellite business. Out of the 24 Tier 2 Contractors, Mercury, FLIR, L3 Harris, and Ducommun were the most comparable companies. No individual player provides similar services to that of Viasat, and the closest ones to them are L3 Harris, BAE Systems, and Raytheon which they collaborate on various projects like STTs or MIDS with. Out of these, L3 is the most comparable given growth / margin although L3 Harris is significantly larger than Viasat’s defense business, and it likely isn’t the most accurate comp given L3’s diversification. Additionally, Ducommun is a service provider to Viasat, however, they lack the growth / margins that Viasat offers. Now, FLIR and Mercury don’t provide the same services as Viasat, but their EBITDA margins and growth rates are the most similar to Viasat’s defense business. Mercury trades at 23x EBITDA, and FLIR was included because it was acquired by Teledyne a few days ago at 17x EBITDA. The reason for the discrepancy in valuation is because ~1/3rd of FLIR’s business is a low margin non-government related business, and the growth rate of the entire business is closer to 3% rather than the defense segment’s 20%. If isolated to just their defense business, it would logically have a higher multiple that would be closer to Mercury. Given that both firms match Viasat’s financials and growth, Viasat should likely trade closer to 23x in that 17-23x multiple range.
At the bare minimum, the defense segment minimizes downside at the current stock price. Viasat arguably has some of the best tailwinds in the defense industry, unique R&D abilities, and the margins / growth, so they at least deserve a premium valuation comparative to the average Tier 2 Defense contractor. Comparable companies is obviously not the ideal source of valuation given that none of these companies operate in the space as Viasat, however, this should give investors a ballpark estimate as to where they should be valued in the case that they are acquired. A catalyst for value realization happens one of two ways — backlog unrolls or separation. Their government business is incredibly lumpy, and their backlog and book-to-bill have grown to record levels at 1.1 B (doesn’t include the 3B in extra IDIQ) and 1.7x, respectively. The 1.7x indicates they are getting more orders than deliveries, and this is up from 2019’s government-specific book-to-bill which was at 1.3x. This uniquely strong demand combined with a record backlog should result in their government segment helping capture some value realization. The other option is acquisition or spinoff since FLIR, which had similar financials, just got acquired.
Satellite Service
There are a few reasons why Viasat’s satellite business is unloved apart from some COVID related damage to their in-flight wifi business.
First, it seems like Viasat hasn’t recovered its cost of capital with their first, Viasat-1, and second, Viasat-2, satellites. However, one can’t look at the company’s overall return on invested capital in order to decipher their ROIC, instead, the analysis should be done with a project-level ROIC. This is because their projects are high fixed cost with a lot of unproductive satellites on their balance sheet that won’t be generating earnings until five years out. It’s difficult to accurately calculate this project-level return on invested capital since the life of the satellite is close to 15-17 years and there is factored in bandwidth deflation (your economics get worse since people continuously expect more bandwidth per dollar), however, management disclosed that 10-years into Viasat-1, the project level ROIC is close 20%.
Second, it looks like the first-generation satellite used by Echostar, their primary competitor in residential internet, was copied from Viasat, so there are a lot of questions around if Viasat has a moat around its tech and satellite business. However, for their third-generation satellites, Viasat’s design was not stolen which was clear by the cost economics discrepancy. The cost per megabit per second calculations for Viasat are roughly 20-40% cheaper. Viasat has been able to squeeze out more value per dollar of invested capital spent due to their vertical integration efforts. Viasat makes everything from their satellite dish, the payload, the satellite software, the terminals, and almost everything involved — this compares to Echostar buying their payload among other things from external sources like SSL. Viasat has been able to optimize in places that others haven’t, and again it’s evident in their uniquely low-cost economics.
Thirdly, are they ever going to be FCF positive? This is a key problem given that satellite companies need to keep sending up satellites in the air which means all of your CFO is reinvested into CAPEX. However, Viasat is able to reach FCF positive territory with the Viasat-3 because they are able to increase scale by nearly 3x while increasing total cost per satellite only by 1.03x between Viasat-2 and Viasat -3. This compares to 2x increase in scale while increasing cost by 1.25x between Viasat-1 and Viasat-2. They’ve been clear about the importance of Viasat-3 and their long term free cash flow strategy since 2015.
Lastly, there is uncertain competitive positioning with the rise of Starlink / Oneweb which are have entered the market to provide lower earth orbit satellites (LEO). Many believe that Viasat is counter-positioned to this attack when in reality they have exposure to the upside of LEOs. Viasat also has a LEO plan to combat latency that is more cost-effective since it’ll be a hybrid network with their GEO; they only need ~300 satellites versus thousands. Viasat is contracted for that Link16 enabled LEO, and it seems like they are the only ones who can successfully complete it given their satellite and Link16 capabilities. They also have exposure to phased array antennas which are needed for LEOs and MEOs, and they have said they are in the final stages of testing.
Before, the discussion into LEO v. GEO, it’s important to understand how large the TAM is. Investors make the mistake of focusing on the US because it’s their first market, however, 2/3rds of their satellite revenues will be international in the next 3-4 years. As a result, it’s important to understand their value in the global ecosystem more than the US. For residential markets all around the world, the NSR estimates that 433M households would be ideal for satellite internet. Additionally, investors shouldn’t look at the US as the best market for satellite internet, given the sizable cable penetration, and use that to reflect the TAM in global markets. Even in the US, Viasat has 600K residential customers, and their Viasat-3, given the increased bandwidth, improved 100 mbps download capacity, and lower cost per mbps, now makes them competitive with the 20M DSL users. This market should translate into 17B revenues by 2028 globally, growing at a 20% CAGR, but this is significantly lower than the TAM since it’s constrained by satellite bandwidth in space. For all aircraft, there’s likely an 8B TAM today growing to 16B in the next decade or so. Then who knows much more TAM with military markets, oil rigs, among others. There’s a lot of market for different players, and Viasat needs at sub-20% market share in order to see significant upside in the stock.
The simple thesis on Viasat is that they can provide cheaper services on a cost per megabit per second basis. This matters because there are three needs that consumers have in the internet market — bandwidth, speed, and latency. Bandwidth and speed matter with the rise of streaming which is close to 75% of internet traffic [Viasat investor deck], and while latency matters for gaming / video conferencing it doesn’t matter for close to 90% of internet traffic. With streaming on the rise, bandwidth consumption only goes up, so consumers will tend to prefer that first over latency improvements. Whoever is the cheapest can underprice and deliver more value. This especially matters in the emerging markets that a majority of Viasat and Starlink’s revenues will be derived from going forward. Starlink cost calculations don’t include their phased array antennas which are estimated to cost close to $2000 compared to hundreds of dollars for a GEO. These antennas are necessary for each household to connect to their internet and are a significant barrier for lower-end markets. In order to feasibly reach homes, they are selling them for $500 (RDOF funding in US solved this), and Starlink will surely find a way to decrease costs over time but the question remains by how much. As consumers demand more bandwidth and speed abroad, it comes at a tradeoff to how much they can pay, so the winner in this space is who can deliver the most bandwidth and speed at the lowest cost. Remember, although Viasat is only currently serving US consumers, 2/3 of their new satellites will be global, so a majority of their revenues will be from a presumably lower ARPU global subscriber base. How can one make that economical — 1) Decrease customer acquisition costs through proven community wifi models and 2) decrease cost per megabit per second — which VSAT is doing right now.
Regardless, below are some details on the drivers of the GEO / LEO market, and the tradeoffs that each satellite makes.
The tradeoffs for these satellites are created because of the difference in the altitude of these different satellites. A GEO is at a much higher altitude than a LEO, so their field of view is much larger so they need fewer satellites for global coverage. Whereas LEOs are closer to Earth, so their latency is much better since the time for a signal to reach a customer is lower. Most of the market is excited about LEOs because of their incredibly low latency. Additionally, LEOs are also easier to send up and have a lower CAPEX so you can innovate much quicker and improve on capacity.
As mentioned below, the battle comes down to cost since that affects the price companies can charge which then affects the TAM. The lower price, the larger the TAM since more consumers can affordably purchase their services.
There are four key drivers for calculating the cost of satellite systems: 1) Hardware Cost of each Satellite 2) Lifespan 3) Utilization and 4) Capacity. Utilization and Lifespan are where I’m variant. Starlink announced that they expect 5-year lives, however, their failure rates per satellite are already closer to 2% per 5 months compared to their FCC Filed 1% claims. Additionally, 1M per LEO satellite is unheard of, and unless their vertical integration is faster than its effects with Tesla then there should likely be a tradeoff between cost and quality. To maintain that 1M, I think the lifespan goes down below 5 years.
On utilization, since Starlink’s field of view is narrower they aren’t able to direct bandwidth to places where there is demand. As a result, since 71% of the Earth is water, all of the time they spend over that water will generate no sales which then decreases utilization. The same will likely happen with China and Russia. That’s roughly 90% of the world’s area. Utilization will be closer to that 10% range meaning that even though they might launch 4000 satellites * 20 gbps of capacity per satellite to get to 80 TBPS of total capacity, only 8 TBs are usable. Field of view and utilization only gets worse as SpaceX announced they are moving most of their satellites from 1100 KM to 550 KM. Utilization should be closer to 10% unless they get military/airline contracts which are unlikely unless they get interlinks.
Interlinks are space lasers that allow satellites to communicate with each other and are essential for serving military / maritime segments since there are no ground systems, like fiber, over the ocean, or in battle. Everyone is incredibly excited that Starlink “successfully” tested interlinks, however, there are two questions to ask. First, how much additional cost are they because if it’s a significant increase then that tradeoff in utilization might be wiped by the increase in cost? Remember, the cost per satellite is significant since you have to multiply the delta in cost by thousands of satellites. Second, they came out in October after their September “successful test of interlinks” and said they “aren’t necessary”. It might just be me, but I’m not sure why a company would make that statement like that if the interlinks are successful and everyone knows that they are critical to military and defense contracts. It somewhat seems like a hedge.
Also, on utilization, Starlink satellites not only need to be over land but you need customers over that land. Viasat already has customers (residential who are about to get a massive upgrade with the launch of Viasat-3, in-flight long-term contracts, Brazil / Australia contracts, acquisition of RigNet, and community wifi in Mexico). SpaceX doesn’t have any of that, and so they are going to need to organically develop all of that to sell all of that new capacity. Below, is my adapted take of Starlink v. Viasat’s economics from Viasat’s IEEE Conference. Adjustments that were made to the graph include adding 40-60 GBPS LEOs, the 7TB GEO, and adjusting the assumption of an LEO’s lifespan from 5 to 3.5 years. The formula for costs per megabit per second is the cost of each satellite / (life span * utilization * capacity per satellite). To clarify, the expectation for Starlink is 1M per satellite w/o interlinks, 5-year life, 10% utilization w/o interlinks, 15-20% utilization w/ interlinks, and 20 GB per satellite.
The Viasat-3 is the 1 TB blue line which will likely be competing with a 10-40 GB satellite for LEOs in the near term. Even with a 40 GB satellite (2x more than current specs), they’d need 17% utilization in order to beat Viasat-3 on these costs. This seems unlikely given that the need for interlinks to reach 17% utilization, and the lack of additional cost for interlinks factored in per satellite to account for that. However, if the Viasat-4 is pulled off, it can’t be beaten even with Starlink’s 25% utilizations, 5-year satellite life, 60 GB per sat., and similar costs despite improvements in utilization and capacity. GEOs are better for scaling and Viasat-4 indicates that. Investors shouldn’t be worried about Viasat’s internet business if they believe in these two things — 1) There is enough TAM globally for Viasat even if Starlink is successful in the near term and 2) Viasat-4 can be pulled off (it looks like mgmt will execute as promised on Viasat-3). In my view, the best case for Starlink is 5-year life of Satellite, 1.5M cost per w/ interlinks, 20% utilization, and 30 GBPS which would all be unheard of for LEOs. In this case, cost per mbps is still 15% higher for the LEO compared to Viasat-3.
If Starlink isn’t cost competitive, that isn’t to say they won’t steal Viasat consumers because Viasat has terrible customer service or worse latency. However, in my opinion, Starlink bulls overestimate latency for consumers abroad as I’d assume most would prefer the cheaper plan with no 500 USD upfront for ground terminals. Maybe in the US, Starlink gets significant demand because of latency, but it’s important to think of the impacts globally rather than having US-centric views given future revenue sources. Here are some additional issues they run into even if they become cost-competitive:
1) Space Regulation - This, along with cost economics are Starlink’s two biggest barriers. They need to be able to prove that the chance of collision is 1/1000 which might be difficult as Starlinks satellite network grows from 4400 to potentially 28K. This might be impossible meaning that there might be a smaller network of satellites that Starlink can have up, meaning that there are fewer gigabits that Viasat would need to compete with. Also, this is important since their failure rates of satellites are closer to 2% rather than their announced 1% which would increase collision likelihood. While all of Starlink’s promises seem good in theory, the actual impact hasn’t been truly studied in depth. More FCC guidelines might question Starlink’s efficacy — I don’t think they’ve grasped at the fact that thousands of new satellites are going to be above us soon.
2) Expected Value Proposition v. Actual Value Proposition - A lot of people assume that there will be no data caps with Starlink, however, there likely will be if Starlink ever wants to be profitable, which is the goal since it’s supposed to be the cash cow for Mars. All of Viasat’s US satellites will have similar capacity to the US usable capacity of a 4400 satellite constellation for Starlink. As a result, Starlink may have to resort to similar measures as Viasat. Customers should expect a SIGNIFICANT improvement in data caps / speeds compared to the Viasat-2 but similar services for Viasat-3 (minus latency) and Starlink (minus price).
Management implies that after rolling-in cost savings for their consumers, each 1 TB satellite should produce around 1B in revenue multiplied by the three satellites they’ll have around the world. With this, their revenue should grow to 3B, and their incremental EBITDA on that 3B would be closer to 50% (45% margins for VSAT-1). With cash flow conversion from EBITDA, historically being over 100%, their cash flow from operations for this segment is closing in on 1.5B, however, this is still a capex heavy business.
Growth of capex is also tied to revenue in that a portion of it is tied to customer premise equipment and reinvestment into new satellites with low maintenance capex. Management states they expect close to 1B in capex for the next three years with a drop-off once the last Viasat-3 is launched 2023. Current CFI includes the capex spend of Satellites and their defense business, however, any discussion of capex increases in earnings calls relates to the satellite business. As a result, there’s a rough assumption that 90% of current capex is related to satellite, so make that 900M in capex going forward with no additional cash flow from the satellite business in at least the next two years. Say CFO increases by 40M each year due to the defense business resulting in 480, 520, 560 in CFO for the next three years respectively. Let’s say they can have two satellites live in air within those next three fiscal years which is enough for them to go cash flow positive due to the drop in capex after all the launches. So for the next three years, they are likely going to need to raise more debt. Based on my calculations close to 1.2B more that needs to be factored into the equity upside.
Below, the very simplified DCF provides some insight on the upside for both the residential and airline business. This assumes that it takes Viasat-3 until 2025 to get full capacity for all 3 satellites. Now, the stock price could be significantly higher with additional visibility on the Viasat-4 which could add additional FCF as soon as 2027. Cash flow for Viasat 1 and 2 assumes 25% EBITDA margins (20% of rev is D&A), and peak operating margins in 2017 for the satellite business 20% prior to launch costs clouding up the EBITDA. However, launch costs will still be long term expenses but will be a smaller % of revenue resulting in higher op. margins than current financials.
Lastly, most comments on Viasat’s satellite business are defensive, however, they have some key pieces of offense that protect them against Starlink. First, their airline WIFI business is capturing market share as their two competitors — Gogo and Global Eagle went bankrupt. They’ve increased their fleet by roughly 20% as a result of a recent Delta deal and Willian Blair suggests they should be producing 180K in EBITDA yearly per plane with a 160K installment cost. Additionally, their airline WIFI business has strong competitive advantages like partnerships with entertainment providers, strong logistics support, and regulatory compliance. Also, Viasat has partnerships with Russia / China’s satcoms to create a seamless network that allows those satellites to work in tandem with Viasat’s networks when flights are over those countries (imp. for regulatory reasons). Starlink not only needs interlinks to break into this market, but they’ll likely take years breaking through this while VSAT continues to lock-in long term contracts with airlines.
For residential, Viasat is already setting up distribution partners with companies like Skye in Brazil which should help with their go-to-market strategy. Starlink lacks these partners currently. GEOs are also better at directing bandwidth to places of demand due to their altitude, so Starlink will likely need to penetrate more countries. This also means there is more regulatory hassle within each country that they have to go through. Viasat also targets the lower-end markets much better than Starlink due to their cheaper user terminal costs, but also their proven community wifi model (essentially wifi hotspots). They’ve established strong networks in markets like Brazil (reached 1M consumers) and have even launched a browser that maximizes speeds for users in those markets. Browsers are sticky due to the personal data that it collects.
I’m still searching for key risks at the current share price, but from my research, there are not a lot of ways to lose money with Viasat at current lows. If they run into a debt crunch, they can likely sell off their defense business. The stock can go below current prices based on Starlink news or earnings misses, but I think the downside is protected due to the defense business. We can get into cases that I believe would overestimate risk. For example, you kill the satellite services business, but then a majority of the commercial systems business goes away with it. If you keep 50%, that translates into a $6 valuation for comm. systems that you’d subtract off of the $37 bear case of defense resulting in a $31 share price. Still around 10% downside at current prices.
A catalyst is once airline travel improves their EBITDA should recover a little more. The key risk on upside is on the demand side. Most analyses, like mine so far, have focused on supply and cost of supply. However, this shouldn’t turn out like the Fiber Bubble that Tren Griffin outlined in his blog. Although bandwidth exists, it doesn’t necessarily imply customers. However, this quote from a Q3 Earnings call in 2019 indicates they’re confident in their ability to sell:
“We're finding and forming valuable partnerships with important like-minded entities in each region as we grow our verticals. We list among these China Satcom, Telebras in Brazil and NBN in Australia. We have others that are not yet announced or are in process. Total demand among all these verticals in each market far exceeds our capacity or even the projected capacity for all the satellites under construction or planned and delivering value in many of these verticals requires customization for each one, with tight integration between service delivery, network management and user terminal and platform integration”
Through these comments, I believe management is actively thinking about the demand side, unlike management during the Fiber crisis.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of one’s views on their satellite business, investors need to focus on one thing — the defense business. The multiple likely won’t decrease in the near term given its range of secular tailwinds, but there’s a chance it compounds earnings at 15-20%. That in itself is enough for recovery and more.
Please, this is not investment advice, and do your own work. I enjoyed covering this company for the last month, so please DM me with any feedback / data inquiries. The whole purpose of my substack is to get feedback since I’m currently an undergraduate that is trying to improve my process by publicly learning. Twitter has been the single most important tool in my life, so I’m hoping this helps out the fellow Fintwit Community. Please follow me at @HCompounders if you want to stay in the loop for future posts.
This one may be worth dusting off again with the imminent acquisition of Inmarsat, sale of Link-16 unit and launch of the first ViaSat-3 satellite last month. Also, more data on LEO and an interesting recent article by Michael Sheetz at CNBC about Starlink growing the customer base rather than cannibalising legacy operators like ViaSat and Hughes.
Enjoyable read, thank you. I noted that Dankberg thinks they can achieve $6bn revenue from each of the 1Tb satellites and you wrote only $1bn per satellite? I think crowded spectrum will also be an issue for LEO. You’re already reading about the battles between Amazon and SpaceX. Did Baupost’s investment lead you to take a closer look at this industry?