Viasat moving away from consumer broadband
August 2, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Viasat’s Annual Report, issued on August 1st, talks about the “the unanticipated ViaSat-3 Americas reflector deployment issue necessitates certain new priorities to execute on our long-term growth strategy.”
“The ViaSat-3 constellation was designed to help us execute our global mobile strategy. Thus, the current situation with the ViaSat-3 Americas reflector undeniably presents some new business challenges. Fortunately, we are in a very strong position to address those challenges,” says Viasat.
Viasat’s 2023 financial year saw $2.6 billion in revenue (and $2.8 billion of new contracts awarded) and a net income of $1.1 billion.
However, those new necessities will see Viasat switch from the US fixed residential market “in favour of prioritising growth in mobile services which has become a very large and attractive market where we have a strong position. Viasat added that “the total addressable satellite mobile broadband service market is large and growing”.
Viasat gives some interesting data as to actual and expected global industry revenues from these mobile broadband services and highlighted by its record revenues earned this past fiscal year.
Viasat suggests that Government Premium Services (including US DoD, US Cyber, Internet of Battlefield Things, US DoD Command & Control, and International MILCOM and Cyber) is growing by some 5 per cent CAGR from a 2020 Actual revenue of $81 billion to an Estimated 2030 revenue of about $130 billion.
The industry’s Mobile Premium Services segment (Commercial airlines, Business air, Maritime, Connected cars, Connected trains and buses) is growing by about 12 per cent CAGR from 2020’s $36 billion to an Estimated 2030 revenue of about $108 billion.
Another industry high growth segment is its Fixed & Enterprise vertical (Energy, Enterprise, Ground Segment, IoT, Cybersecurity) which is expected to grow CAGR of some 7 per cent from 2020’s $218 billion to about $445 billion.
The Consumer Services segment, however, is not quite so appealing. Viasat says that the industry (Residential internet, Community internet, Smart home and SME) is expected to grow from a 2020 level of some $650 billion to a 3 per cent CAGR to an Estimated $900 billion by 2030.
Chairman Mark Dankberg says that the current situation with ViaSat-3 Americas “undeniably presents some new business challenges. Fortunately, we are in a very strong position to address those challenges.”
He says the ‘follow on’ satellites (ViaSat-3 MENA and ViaSat-3 AsiaPac) “though nominally intended for a specific region, is capable of operating in each region. That gives us additional flexibility to deploy capacity where it is needed most.”
And, of course, ViaSat now owns Inmarsat and this means that it has grown its overall fleet has grown to 11 Ku-band satellites compared with just four in the previous year.
“Our strategy and execution included prudent contingency plans – for example, leasing additional capacity over North America and placing insurance covering ViaSat-3 Americas – that bring further stability to our business,” says Dankberg.
Viasat’s Q1 numbers will be released on August 9th.