01.21.09
Posted in Financials, Globalstar, ICO/DBSD, LightSquared, Regulatory, Spectrum, TerreStar at 9:46 am by timfarrar
Last week, the FCC awarded ICO its ATC license, with no requirement to enter into a ground spare contract at this stage. Indeed ICO will only have to demonstrate 30 days before commencing ATC service that “firm arrangements are in place to meet the spare satellite requirement” within 1 year of service initiation. Of course, since a satellite would normally take around 2 years to construct, ICO would have to enter into a ground spare contract well before that 30 day notice period. However, ICO has gained considerably more flexibility to keep its expenditures to a minimum, while pursuing resolution of its litigation with Boeing and waiting for a more favorable economic climate in which to launch commercial service.
With this ruling, along with Globalstar’s ATC license grant last year, the FCC has shown a desire to be flexible in its interpretation of the ATC rules, so as to ensure that ATC deployments do eventually take place. Arguably, this flexibility has advantaged operators such as ICO and Globalstar, over TerreStar and Skyterra (formerly MSV), who have committed to considerably greater capital expenditure, based at least to some degree on a more cautious interpretation of the ATC requirements. Most notably, TerreStar is already well advanced with construction of its ground spare satellite, although we have heard rumors that work may have paused in anticipation of the ICO ruling, and (unless TerreStar gains a European license in the near future and decides to use the satellite there) we expect that construction will soon be formally suspended to save money, on the assumption that this will not impact TerreStar’s pending ATC application.
A future question for the FCC with regard to ATC “flexibility” may well relate to what level of satellite performance is needed to justify that an ATC service is truly “ancillary”. TerreStar and Skyterra have built very large and powerful (and expensive) satellites, in order to deliver voice and data connectivity to “standard” mobile devices without external antennas. ICO and Globalstar’s satellites are rather less capable (and cheaper), but if they are not required to deliver fully reliable handheld satellite voice services, then these satellites could also operate with “standard” mobile devices. For example, if the only test required is to complete a call from a handset on a tripod in an open field, with no head blockage or obstruction from trees etc, then a far less expensive satellite is required than if link margin is needed to overcome these obstructions and the call is made or received by a real person walking around with the phone.
Given that many hundreds of millions of dollars of satellite construction costs are at stake, it will be very interesting to see how the FCC ultimately decides this issue and therefore who has made the right call with their satellite design.
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11.25.08
Posted in Globalstar at 10:02 am by timfarrar
With Globalstar looking to raise additional funding to complete construction and launch of its second generation satellites, it is critical that it demonstrates good fourth quarter results, by selling as many SPOT units as possible. Indeed Globalstar’s most recent 10-Q indicates that it is targeting between 1M and 1.5M users in North America by the end of 2010, although at the end of the third quarter it only had around 50,000 SPOT subscribers. Unfortunately the SPOT unit is a highly discretionary purchase for most consumers, since it represents such a new type of service (think for example of how long it took for awareness of TiVo to grow), and with the downturn in consumer spending, it seems likely that sales of SPOT units have also been affected.
As a result, we’ve now seen SPOT offering a $50 rebate to new subscribers, and most recently an announcement (shown below) that existing subscribers are now able to get additional SPOT units for free if they sign up for the $150 service plan. With 100,000 units already shipped or ordered, hopefully these incentives will allow SPOT to show significant subscriber gains in the fourth quarter. However, as we’ve highlighted before, the cost of subscriber acquisition for SPOT is quite high and this rebate/free unit program will do nothing to reduce those costs. It therefore seems unlikely that SPOT will help to generate the cash needed to pay for the launch of Globalstar’s second generation satellites in the near term.
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11.03.08
Posted in Globalstar, ICO/DBSD, Spectrum at 9:07 pm by timfarrar
It came down to the wire, but on Friday October 31, the FCC approved Globalstar’s application to offer ATC in conjunction with Open Range Communications. Friday was the deadline for Open Range to secure spectrum under the terms of its $267M USDA rural development loan agreement and as the FCC pointed out in its order, it was faced with a difficult choice between waiving many of the ATC requirements until Globalstar’s next generation satellites are launched, and losing the loan which would facilitate WiMAX deployment in 500 rural communities.
The FCC voted 3-2 to approve the application, over the objection of two (Republican) commissioners who worried about the “inappropriate precedent” it might set. Notably, the CTIA also came out strongly against the application, suggesting that a “grant of the sweeping waivers that Globalstar is seeking would effectively eviscerate the MSS/ATC rules of any meaning and enable Globalstar to ‘game’ the MSS/ATC regulatory scheme to maximize use of MSS spectrum for terrestrial service”.
The FCC has imposed a fairly strict time limit for Globalstar to deploy its second generation satellites and come into compliance with the ATC rules, but it already appears that the door has been opened for other prospective ATC operators to seek a relaxation of the conditions associated with ATC. For example, ICO indicated today that it does not believe it will be necessary to order a ground spare satellite before the FCC will approve its ATC application (merely that a satellite will have to be on order before ATC service commences), despite the fact that the ATC licensing rules require a “substantial showing that a non-operational MSS licensee will soon meet the gating criteria” established by the FCC, including a ground spare being available within 12 months of commencing service.
It also looks like the stage is now set for a bigger fight between the cellular operator community on one hand and the MSS-ATC proponents on the other. This may actually be a good thing from the point of view of the ATC proponents, since at least it shows that cellular operators are once again taking ATC seriously (cellular operators dropped their earlier opposition to ATC several years ago, apparently believing that it would never come to fruition). However, it will be interesting to see who will gain the upper hand in the regulatory battles to come, especially if the change of administration leads to a number of new faces at the FCC.
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09.23.08
Posted in Financials, Globalstar, Inmarsat, Iridium at 11:05 pm by timfarrar
Despite several successful fundraising deals this year by Globalstar, TerreStar and MSV, Iridium’s deal with GHL is noteworthy as the first investment to directly validate the potential of the MSS market in the absence of spectrum upside, since Iridium cannot free up significant amounts of spectrum for an ATC play.
However, there is no direct read across to the MSS market potential for other players, since Iridium and Inmarsat are the only MSS operators that can provide truly global service across the oceans and thereby address the maritime and aeronautical segments that account for roughly half of wholesale MSS service revenues. These markets segments continue to grow strongly, particularly for broadband communications, and we expect Iridium’s next generation system to be designed to compete more directly with Inmarsat for maritime and aeronautical broadband customers. Combined with moderate progress in land-based handheld and low data rate MSS markets, Iridium should be able to grow its revenue and subscriber base over time, despite increasing levels of competition from new players such as ICO, and Inmarsat’s entry into the handheld MSS market.
Where we can draw some conclusions for other players is on the maximum amount Iridium could afford to pay for Globalstar in the event of a merger, given the value placed on Iridium in this transaction ($591M). Given that Iridium’s revenues this year will be about three times those of Globalstar, and that Iridium presumably does not ascribe value to Globalstar’s ATC opportunity, it seems likely that Iridium would place such a low valuation on Globalstar as to all but rule out any prospects of a negotiated deal between the two companies. At least in this case, it therefore looks like we won’t see a merger being agreed any time soon.
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09.16.08
Posted in Financials, Globalstar at 8:08 am by timfarrar
Globalstar faces its next quarterly milestone payment to the satellite construction escrow account with Thales Alenia Space at the end of September. The company has admitted that sooner or later it will need to raise more money to complete its second generation satellite constellation – it has previously indicated that $250M+ will be needed, though some of this could be offset by cashflows from operations if the SPOT product really takes off. However, in the short term, as we’ve noted previously, SPOT isn’t producing cash. Excluding the money already in the escrow account, Globalstar had available liquidity of $75M at the end of June and expected payments to Thales Alenia of EUR146M over the 12 months to June 2009. The Euro/dollar exchange rate has fallen by about 10% since then, cutting the value of this EUR146M to only $208M in dollar terms, compared to $231M at the end of June. As a result the payment which Globalstar has to make into the escrow account at the end of September may be closer to $50M than the $60M+ it could have been if the exchange rate had remained constant. The original sum would have come close to using up Globalstar’s remaining liquidity, but now it looks like Globalstar may have another 3 months to raise additional funds.
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09.15.08
Posted in Globalstar, Services at 9:41 pm by timfarrar
I went camping with my seven year old twins in the Desolation Wilderness near Lake Tahoe over Labor Day weekend and took my SPOT satellite tracker with me as a test. It proved pretty useful for my wife to keep an eye on our progress and I certainly felt reassured to know that we could summon help in an emergency. While it might not attract millions of users, there certainly seems to be a good niche for the product both in the outdoor market and also for keeping track of (for example) your elderly parents when they go on a long drive. I even know a colleague who uses it to keep track of where her teenage son is going in the car – I wonder how long it will take him to realize how she knows he’s not where he said he was going to be.
I wonder when we’ll see the first two way version of this device – either from Globalstar or its competitors – since it would be great to have at least an acknowledgement that your message had been delivered.
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08.14.08
Posted in Globalstar at 11:50 am by timfarrar
Globalstar hasn’t given much detail about how much it costs to acquire a SPOT customer, but it looks from the company’s 2008Q2 10-Q like the growing demand for SPOT might not do much to improve Globalstar’s cash situation in the immediate future. The company’s marketing (MG&A) costs are about $5M higher than for the corresponding period in 2007, and they look to have added close to 20K SPOT customers in the quarter. At an ARPU of say $11 per month (a mix of the $100 basic subscriptions and the $50 tracking add-on), then if all the increase in MG&A is from SPOT, the subscriber acqusition cost is roughly about 24 months of revenue. That means that SPOT is unlikely to generate much if any incremental cash for Globalstar in the near term.
Of course SAC is always higher in the early days, when there are a lot of launch and start-up costs, and should decline to a more reasonable level in the future. A reasonable benchmark is probably satellite radio, given their similar ARPU levels, which has a cost per gross subscriber addition of around 10 months revenues (although much greater scale). At this level, then once things settle down, Globalstar should be able to generate at least some cash from the first year upfront payment made by each new subscriber. However, SPOT probably won’t help Globalstar generate cash to pay their satellite construction costs over the next 12 months.
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