Viasat Inc (VSAT) 2022 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Hello, and welcome to Viasat's Fiscal Year 2022 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Your host for today's call is Rick Baldridge, President and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Baldridge.

Okay. Thanks. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. We released our shareholder letter earlier today before the market opened. And we hope you guys have had time to review it. On today's call, we're going to have just a brief opening remark, and then we'll go into Q&A. But first, Robert, can you provide the safe harbor?

Sure. Thanks, Rick. 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, Rick.

Okay. Thanks, Rob. In addition to Robert joining me on the call will be Mark Dankberg, our Executive Chairman; our CFO, Shawn Duffy; Paul Froelich from Corporate Development; and Peter Lopez from Investor Relations.

Just a couple of comments before we jump into the Q&A. We had another great quarter. We generated record revenue, record adjusted EBITDA, and we built on the momentum that we finished our last fiscal year with. Revenue grew 25% year-over-year to $665 million, and adjusted EBITDA grew at more than twice that rate, up 52%. That -- part of that's reflecting last year, the quarter was one that was hardest first hit by commercial air.

Into our segments delivered strong year-over-year revenue growth. In Satellite Services, year-over-year double-digit organic revenue growth was driven mainly by the improvement in our In-Flight Connectivity business, which was, as we've mentioned, severely impacted last year by COVID. We continue to see sequential quarterly improvements as passengers return to air travel, but we're still well below pre-pandemic business levels. Our fixed broadband revenue continued to grow organically as well, both year-over-year and sequentially, as we continue to see strong demand in the market.

Strong organic growth across the segment was also augmented by the 2 acquisitions we made, RigNet and EBI, that closed early in the quarter. Government Systems had good revenue and EBITDA performance, up 4% and 6% year-over-year. A 22% year-over-year increase in service revenue was the main driver, while tactical data links, cybersecurity and mobile broadband product lines also contributed. We expect continued growth in this segment in addition to another 900 -- or another large IDIQ, $120 million of backlog with that IDIQ win in the period.

In other words, the $920 million represents kind of unawarded potential value of that one. And when you add those IDIQs up, it's about $4 billion of unawarded IDIQ values that doesn't -- isn't reflected in our backlog. Commercial Networks have great performance with strong revenue growth and a large reduction in our recorded loss in that segment. A lot of this was from the ramp-up of IFC terminals shipments that has restarted, and we had another strong contribution from our ground antenna systems division, which is driven by all the new space demand.

In addition to the really good financial results, we completed several key execution milestones. We closed on the RigNet and the EBI, our European broadband acquisition, in late April. Both these will accelerate our expansion into new and adjacent vertical markets such as energy and maritime and new geographical markets, particularly in the EMEA region, now both expand our global operational and customer-facing capabilities supported by the 3 global constellation as we try to launch services in those geographies.

Leading to ViaSat-3 -- regarding the ViaSat-3 constellation, the payload of our first satellite for ViaSat-3 for the Americas has been at Boeing for 2 months now for integration with the bus module and final environmental testing. We began installing IFC equipment on the first aircraft of our new customer, Delta Air Lines, with whom we have over 550 aircraft under contract. We expect the install rate to continue to accelerate over the next few quarters. And by this weekend, we'll have about 80 aircraft installed, and that's accelerating.

Now these achievements reflect our continued focus on execution ahead of ViaSat-3 with regard our global footprint and expand into new geographic and vertical markets. Our recent results is, I think, key proof points we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our 5-year financial targets that we communicated last year. To that end, as you see in our letter, we also introduced revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance this time to give you a picture of the near-term ramp towards that 5-year goals that we talked about last year. This guidance shows that we expect solid growth over the next 2 years across all of our business as we begin to bring the ViaSat-3 network online.

So with that, operator, we'll go to questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Philip Cusick with JPMorgan.

This is Sebastiano on for Phil. The fixed broadband versus mobility and other fixed broadband breakout in the letter was very helpful. Wondering if you could perhaps provide some more similar incremental color just on the domestic broadband trends. What are you seeing in terms of subscribers and ARPU? I mean results were stronger than we had anticipated. I just wanted to see if you can maybe delve a little deeper into some of the underlying trends. And what if any indication or impact are you seeing from SpaceX Starlink's launch and ramp?

Mark?

Okay. It's Mark. The dominant issue for us over the next few quarters in U.S. broadband, it's just going to be supply. We're pretty much sold out, the time lines that we have over the U.S. So the main trend we're seeing is high demand for more bandwidth, and a lot of that is being absorbed by customers that are upgrading to provide more bandwidth. So we're seeing probably a few thousand -- in the order of a few thousand fewer subscribers, but the subscribers that we have are buying more premium plans.

And so that's sort of holding that steady to up. But then the other factor that's entering into it is all these other markets that we're developing in advance of ViaSat-3 with -- and the return of the In-Flight Connectivity. So that is causing us to basically allocate our bandwidth in the way that both pave the way for the fastest growth in the new businesses and deliver the revenue and earnings growth that we're counting on to finance the new system. So those are kind of the factors that are in play. In terms of overall demand, overall demand is really hot. And yes, of course, we can -- we have tools where we can see that they start on just serving people in the market, but the overall demand is far greater than what they are looking at which is so far not really material.

I think on the last call we indicated that we had expected a decline in subscribers in the U.S. market over until ViaSat-3 comes online. But in general, we think the revenue will be about flat year-over-year in that residential broadband segment.

That's helpful. And perhaps if you could -- I guess there haven't been any headlines subsequent to the Link 16 -- the potential divestiture of a portion of the government business. So anything there? I mean, how should we be thinking about that? Obviously, trends in Link 16 business and some of your other verticals remain strong. So anything we should be thinking about as it pertains to potential monetization of a portion of your government business?

No. Well, if there was, we wouldn't say anything about it here. But we like -- I mean the business is growing. And so we see continued very high demand and good growth in that segment. So I think we're positioned strongly. You saw in the note. I think we're going to hear pretty soon we will launch our first LEO that has Link 16 on it. And so that new space element of Link 16 business is a growth area. So -- but in general, whether it's acquisitions or divestitures, we wouldn't make any comments on it here.

Fair. And maybe one last one for Shawn. Just how should we think about the CapEx run rate for the remainder of the year? Obviously, you called out about leverage ticking higher through the rest of the year. So just overall CapEx expectations within fiscal '22, would be great.

Yes, no problem. So I think what we talked about last quarter was on average kind of targeting that $300 million per quarter kind of mark. We were a little lighter this quarter, but it starts to ramp through the year as we get closer to launch. So that's still a good number.

Our next question comes from the line of Ric Prentiss with Raymond James.

A couple of questions. Again, I appreciate that near-term guidance on the long-term path. One quick housekeeping one. I assume RigNet is not in the fixed -- U.S. fixed broadband percent, and that is just truly U.S. fixed broadband?

That's correct. I should let Shawn answer that.

That's correct.

Okay. And when we think about that near-term guidance of revenue -- average annual revenue growth of approximately 20% and average annual EBITDA growth in the mid-teens. Obviously, this fiscal year, you get 11 months worth of benefit of the 2 acquisitions. How should we think about what ex M&A growth might look like over that period? You did call out how much M&A was helping in the quarter.

Yes. So I think when we tried gave you that guidance, we kind of looked at the all in. But if you recall, last quarter, we talked about the kind of additives that we expected this year for RigNet, EBI. That was notionally about $40 million on the EBITDA line.

Okay. And it looks like RigNet does split between Satellite Services and product or our Commercial Networks?

Yes. There is about 90% that shows up in the service side and about 10% related to some of their product efforts on the commercial -- I'm sorry, 90% in the Satellite Service side, about 10% that shows up over in commercial.

Sure. Okay. That makes sense. And then when we think about from the letter, you mentioned recalibration of metrics reported. Can you help us understand what you're thinking about? How you're reporting and what you might add to what you're telling so that you might take away from what you're telling us?

Sure. Yes. So right now, what we're seeing is a lot of demand across multiple vertical and geographic markets. So that's residential enterprise, In-Flight Connectivity, general aviation, land mobile, government, maritime energy. So we've got all these different markets. And we've got to figure out how to allocate that across them. What we've -- and clearly, there's way more demand than we can serve with the resources that we have for the next few quarters, when you aggregate it across all those markets. And we really like having a broad, robust and resilient base of markets.

We don't want to be overexposed to any one geographic market or any one vertical market. So what we're trying to do is say, look, here's what our focus is, is we want to earn revenue, earnings and cash flow in line with our capital planning and our leverage objectives. And we also want to build momentum for the increased economic productivity, the coverage we'll get, the total bandwidth we'll have, the geographic flexibility that we will have with ViaSat-3. And we want that to increase our revenue and earnings diversity and resilience and robustness. So that's -- those are our objectives.

And what we're looking to do is, one is, we know that people are trying to use some of these other metrics to forecast what our growth will be. So we're getting to that. We're basically saying, here's the guidance that we're going to get in revenue and adjusted EBITDA. And we also will continue to give this metric that shows the diversification of our business, which is here's the U.S., which has been -- especially during COVID, it was very U.S. residential-centric. And now you can see we're back on track to get that diversification. So we'll give you that. And then we're still looking at ways to refine those metrics that take into account all these markets, capture them holistically. And we'll probably introduce some other metrics over the next year, probably over the next year or so, certainly, by the time we have ViaSat-3 in service.

Okay. Makes sense. And the 1 thing I don't hear a lot about probably because it's such a low bandwidth is Internet of Things. Other companies are looking at IoT opportunities. Should we assume that's not as high a priority given a good problem to have, you've got way more demand than supply right now?

Yes. So a lot of people that find IoT businesses as sort of by definition low bandwidth things. There actually are some really interesting IoT businesses that we're working on, especially with the addition of RigNet that are broadband applications. Those are -- they're -- basically, think of them as the recurring revenue is pretty high relative to the acquisition cost of the terminals. So that type of IoT stuff is really interesting to us. And there are some -- a lot of those, you might imagine are things that are, say, video-intensive. Those types of IoT applications are bandwidth intensive. So are things in monitoring certain industrial processes, drilling, mining, things like that. So those are absolutely in the near-term opportunity set for us.

And also think of things that need to be -- need the cloud compute to be able to have AI elements back to how you control elements. And so those things are very data intensive.

Yes. But we will -- right now, we're just including all that in our enterprise segment. That's because they're all enterprise applications.

Our next question comes from the line of Mathieu Robilliard with Barclays.

I had a question first with regards to the guidance. Obviously, it's great that you give more clarity, but I guess we always want a bit more. And I was wondering what is the launch schedule that you have assumed in the guidance in terms of the satellite in order to deliver that growth? So that was my first question.

Yes. Well, it hasn't changed. Obviously, those things can move around a little bit, but it hasn't changed since we gave it before. When we had talked about roughly a 9-month schedule from the time we delivered the satellite to Boeing until the time they would ship it. Obviously, there's multiple factors that can cause that to move to the left or to the right. It should be the most predictable part of the schedule versus building the payload. So you could say, well, that represents a time frame of X and then you add a month or 2 to that for launch preparation and then a couple, 3 months for testing and once it gets on orbit. Right now, we don't have a real reason to change the schedule we've given and -- but we might. Something could happen in the interim. It's just too early since we gave it to Boeing to change -- to predict anything different than what we said before right now.

Okay. So that's still Q1 2022 calendar kind of...

Q1, Q2 time frame and that, I'd say, just given the schedule things more likely Q2.

Yes, yes. Then just I had a second question about CapEx. And obviously, you've given indications over the years. And because phasing can be different from what we assume at some point in time, it's always difficult to hit it right on our side. But I just wanted to confirm that the kind of numbers you had given initially about the cost of the constellation, we're basically on track. And what I have noted down was like $550 million for ViaSat-3 satellite, plus maybe $150 million for ground. So that was the plan for ViaSat-3. I just want to confirm that was still more or less what you guys had in mind and whether or not you're already spending something on ViaSat-4. That is something that we should wait a little bit to start to incorporate in our estimates.

Yes. So I think there are a couple of things. As we've talked about, I guess, the full cost is for the full constellation and the ranges there that have been about, I'll say, $2.3 billion and so for all 3 satellites. And so we're continuing to make progress. I'd say coming out of this...

The difference -- that has launched and hit just ground and the satellite too.

Yes. On the initial ground. So we need to make sure that you got all that into your numbers. The other thing is we're about right now 60%, maybe a little bit more, complete on that funding. So you can kind of get a notion of what's left to over the next couple of years.

Okay. And on ViaSat-4, sorry, maybe I missed it in your answer. Is there anything already being spent that is relevant?

We're doing some early initial efforts there. We're still scoping out what that ultimately looks like. But there is some real small spending. It's not significant.

We have started work on that, but it's ramping up.

Great. And maybe a last question. So I think it was yesterday that there was an article based on speed test done by Ookla, which is respectable as far as I can say. And it shows that some of the speeds on Starlink are reaching 100 megabits while you guys and Hughes and other are more around 20 megabytes now and -- megabits rather. I realize this is not apples-to-apples. You are at full capacity. You're trying to manage that as well as you can. And there's obviously a different mix in your customer base. But I just was curious to hear from you what you thought about those numbers, if that is in line with what you're expecting? And how maybe we can start to think about what you could deliver with ViaSat-3? I guess it's -- again, it's always a mix between volume, speed, ARPU.

Yes. So one is yes, it is, I mean, all these things, but the most obvious thing on those speed test measurements is that we offer service plans with different speeds. So the vast majority of our customers are on plans with 12 or 25 megabit per second speed. Though we have tens of thousands of customers with 50 or 100 megabit speeds. And the speed that we deliver on those plans are above 100 -- well, there's 100 megabit plans, they're above 100 megabits per second. And I mean that would be the apples-to-apples comparison.

And the thing I would emphasize is that, yes, even with the number of subscribers that we have and our satellites being effectively full, we do meet the speed that we advertise. So that includes the 1,500 megabit plan. So that would be a more relevant comparison of us versus anything. And the same is true if you look at that article -- article that you're referencing. What it does is it's not just for us. It's for all service providers that provide multiple speeds. They just provide the average across all their different service tiers and compare that to Starlink, which has only 1 service tier. So that's really the part that I think people should pay the most attention to.

Our next question comes from the line of Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to talk about LEOs a little bit. You talked about the Link 16 LEO going up. What is the process for the testing of that and potentially for a larger order following that? And then I think in the past, you've talked about if there was government funding a domestic LEO kind of broadband product might be interesting to you. We've obviously got the broadband bill or the infrastructure bill working its way through Congress with significant funding for broadband. So I wondered if you had any thoughts on that and how that might apply to Viasat as well?

Okay. So first on the Link 16 LEO, there is definitely interest in U.S. DoD to extend the range of Link 16, which is -- it's a line of sight network, and it has terrestrial relays, but you still have a fairly limited coverage area of any particular network. The data that is on Link 16 is really, really valuable for a number of applications, including in applications that are well beyond the range of each network. So that's what's -- I mean, fundamentally, that's what's driving DoD interest in Link 16. There are, I'd say, a few different initiatives, all of which we're involved in, to provide Link 16 in space.

So how -- what the ultimate anticipation of that is it will depend a little bit on which organizations end up having the lead on it. Right now we have an Air Force program. There's a Space Force program as well that we're involved in for Link 16 in space. There are -- we believe there's still a bunch of additional work to be done on networking, ground, terminal interoperability with space, what the functionality of the space is, how to integrate with other data links. So overall, we see it as a really, really interesting and potentially a really big opportunity, but it's a little bit early to be more specific about how programmatically -- how it will turn out.

Also, I think the other thing that we really like about it is that there's opportunities for us, especially given what's going on now. We've worked with a lot of the customer organizations that we do work with in order to help shape that program. And that's -- in Link 16, that's really been one of the reasons we've been so successful is our ability to kind of work with end users and anticipate what their needs are. That's how we develop most of our Link 16 product line, is through that type of nondevelopmental item. And we think there's a really good, similar opportunity in space.

On the commercial LEO front, we have a filing that we've done for a Ka-band, nongeosynchronous orbit system, where we've proposed to lower the altitudes from MEO to LEO in order to deliver latency that's in the sub-100 millisecond range. So that, we're still -- it's still pending approval from the FCC. I don't say -- we're doing additional work on LEOs. We're doing work on the LEO business models. We've done a ton of work on space sustainability, which is really, I think, is going to be a very big factor in how the entire LEO market develops, especially given filings for close to 100,000 new LEOs in the last few -- couple of quarters. So I'd say just stay tuned for that. I think we'll come up -- we're going to continue to evolve our plans. We also want to work with other NGSO partners to the extent that we can. That LEO is an area where, to a large extent, we may rather work with others than just own everything ourselves. That would allow us to deliver the services that we want through these hybrid models, which we think ultimately is still the way things are going to turn out.

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley Securities.

Further toward the proliferation of all of these sensory satellite constellations going up that are just collecting just ever-increasing amounts of data. Has there been any more progress on talking to anyone about using ViaSat-3 as sort of like a backhaul network where they could upload the data into -- up to GEO and then down -- back down to earth to get the data in the hands of the people that want it more quickly?

Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

And that would require what them pointing -- just them pointing an antenna to you. That's the main requirement there or...

Yes. Think of it as the way things work now primarily, there's really 2 modes. The dominant mode now is that satellites have ground pointing radios that send the data they collect to earth stations that are distributed around the world. And it's pretty much the same for government and commercial systems. One of the main issues is that there are no ground earth stations in sight in a lot of places where we're trying to collect information, especially over oceans and other areas. And so people are interested in getting that data back sooner. So we're involved in a number of different ways to do that, one of which is what you just mentioned, which is satellites could have an additional upward pointing radio that relay stuff pretty much immediately upon -- anywhere in the world, they can relay data back if they use a geosynchronous satellite as kind of a relay node.

And there are a number of governments and some billion satellites that do just that already. It's very, very expensive when you use government and civilian satellites like NASA or government satellites to do that. And it can be far, far less expensive with satellite like ViaSat-3. So we're working with both government commercial operators who are interested in doing that. The other thing that we're doing as well is people are interested in doing sort of a similar thing, relaying among other NGSO satellites. And that's another area that we've been really successful in. So for instance, on the Iridium network, we've built their -- all their inter-satellite links, and we have a number of government programs on those inter-satellite links as well.

So that would allow people to relay control or data information at altitudes lower than geosynchronous. And then the other thing that we're doing, which just ties into the same thing is, especially building a number of really large ground earth stations, which would allow these sensing satellites to transmit much higher volumes of data without having to make the satellites bigger and more powerful from a transmission perspective. So that's -- so basically, think of it as 3 different approaches, all aimed at the same issue, which is how do I get a lot of data down really fast. And then the other part is, how do I do that as quickly as possible, from when I collect that data to get it back to the ground.

Okay. And then the final question for me just relates to CPE. So companies have invested billions of dollars in trying to make phased array or flat panel antennas that are low cost and easy for consumers to install and get their data or their broadband. And is that still something you envision being able to offer with ViaSat-3? And if so, how soon? And would that just be with your own technology? Or are you looking at others as well?

Okay. So the phased arrays are valuable when you have to constantly repoint. And that can be because you could have a fixed satellite and a moving platform. Now it means you have to constantly repoint or you can have a fixed user terminal and a moving satellite. That's why you have to have them for -- or something similar to that for a nongeosynchronous constellation. You've got a lot of moving platforms at and moving terminals or moving satellites and moving terminals. So we've -- we're working on all of those modes.

We recently did a flight test of a small phased array antenna on a business jet. And so we think mobility platforms are probably the first place that we would apply that type of phased array technology. We also could apply it to ground terminals. One of the other benefits of applying it to ground terminals is it would allow you to quickly hop among multiple different satellites. So that could be multiple different fixed satellites or multiple different NGSO satellites. And for the type of hybrid services that we're talking about, having a phase array antenna even for a fixed terminal is what makes that possible. So we're working on all those. Yes, sure, certainly, we'll have those out in the ViaSat-3 time frame.

In addition to that, I mean, one of the things on the presidential stuff, you can do self install. It doesn't have to be a phased array and other low cost things, still working on those as well.

Our next question comes from the line of Caleb Henry with Quantity (sic) [Quilty].

I had a question about the Viasat's role in the recent $950 million IDIQ contracts. I think there's 27 different companies on that. Can you share what exactly Viasat's role is amongst that group? And perhaps of the $950 million, do you have a percentage you think up for Viasat to claim?

That's hard piece. That value isn't distributed among everybody. That's the IDIQ contract for Viasat. And the task orders will evolve from studies to specific contractual tasks, and that there's a lot of things in there that we could do over the window. But that's not a shared value.

What we do on that is that it is an area that we've done for 30 years, which is simulations for multiple aircraft on the rehab -- we have been the primary developer and provider of these simulators that they use to evaluate aircraft. And it's hard to estimate what the -- we get communication -- simulators primarily, communications and other...

Things -- community things.

And that we've done that for like one of the major markets is for all the advanced fighter jets that they all use our simulation equipment. That's what it pertains to.

Those are certainly near-term test orders.

Okay. And then just a clarification from something you had said earlier, I wasn't sure if I heard right. Did you say that ViaSat-3 will have 3 months of testing once it's launched?

I said it would have 2 to 3 months. I mean it could be 4. We're hoping for it to be sooner. This is a very, very complicated network. Obviously, it's our first one, and we want to be incredibly thorough on the testing of it. So we will give more updates as we get closer to that. But we'd love for it to be 2. It could be 4.

And then just a question on the real-time earth network. You were just talking about various solutions for ground connectivity. How many of those antennas or gateway stations have you completed at this point? And can you remind us how many you're deploying globally?

We've been working in this space for a long time. So it's a bunch of the new space platforms that Mark was talking about and very, very, very large antennas in the market right now. We have multiple programs going simultaneously right now so...

There's 2 different elements to this. One is us providing antennas; two, customers that purchase those antennas and use them only for their own networks. So we also have a service where we will either use antennas that we own or that partners own and sell time on those antennas and multiple systems as a service. So there are others that do a similar service, but the services can be differentiated in a number of ways by the size of antennas, by where they're located, what RF band they operate in.

So we've been oriented towards more of the emerging markets, which are the higher frequency bands and placing those antennas in places we think are well suited to those applications. But our main effort right now is not on owning a whole bunch of antennas, but on building a partner network for that. And I'm not going to give an answer right now on the number of antennas because I don't know what it is exactly. It's not enormous, but what matters a lot is capacity, the placement of those antennas and what we think is the way the market emerges and which antennas and RF bands will have to be the most important. And what we're really oriented is towards where we think the market is going, which is the higher bands and higher speeds.

Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Koontz with Needham & Company.

I want to ask about your supply chain and you're seeing much of an impact from the semiconductor shortage impacts on your terminals, costs, deliverables, sort of thing.

Yes. We really -- for deliveries to date, we have seen very little impact, but we're starting to see the impact across the business, mainly in longer lead items that we have. So we're going to -- we will have it. It's not -- I'd say the good news during the window where it had the biggest impact on everybody, we had less deliveries in that cycle and pretty good inventory. We actually have pretty good inventory built on the government side. And so we haven't seen much to date, but we have forecast in our outlook -- additional impact for delays.

Our next question comes from the line of Giles Thorne with Jefferies..

Anyway, I wanted to come back to the question of LEOs. And LEO is a mobility application rather than the discussing about the program. And this is a question prompted by 2 expansive developments in the past few weeks and months. One installing (inaudible) in active discussions with several airlines and predicting the 90% of ISD traffic will be over LEOs within 10 years, which is a big departure, I think from what anyone else has been saying. And then obviously, back the door with -- and having a multilayered network with different (technical difficulty). So would just be interested to get some high-level comment about what you think about LEO and that business.

Okay. Well, it's not super surprising that an operator has only LEOs. I would say that 90% of the market will go to LEO operators. There are some really difficult challenges with doing mobility with especially low flying LEO satellites that have very small reach. And we've kind of seen this in other NGSO systems, where think of it as it might have global coverage, and global coverage might mean I can be anywhere, but I can't be everywhere. I have -- especially when you think about some of the problems that are around how the airports, we have large numbers of airplanes that disperse in all directions or lots of different directions. Those are really hard problems for LEO satellites with very small beams. Unless you have very, very large numbers of satellites, and that's where I think this whole issue about space sustainability, how many satellites can be supported and how those should be allocated is going to turn out to be a very big factor in that.

What we do think is that a hybrid approach or a multi-orbit approach, which you're seeing, I'd say, more operators kind of come to the conclusion that multi-orbit hybrid makes complete sense. That's one thing we can say and that I think that's a lot more likely long-term solution. And yes, in going to the Inmarsat ORCHESTRA thing, could you make terrestrial into that? It's possible, certainly for terrestrial mobile or land mobile or in view of land. Maybe you could -- I think there are some challenges with that scale, but it's possible. What we would say is that having more tools in your toolkit to deliver a comprehensive service is good. And remember, those comprehensive services are going to include not just Internet access, but other probably media entertainment, other forms of communications as well. Did I answer your question?

So I'd just add one thing that we still think the dimension of value that we have been successful at and that is the right one, and that's delivering a lot of value in an area where there's high demand. And that's the problem.

Yes. I mean, bandwidth is of a dominant value -- think of the dominant value proposition. And the thing we've been the most focused on and I still think we're absolutely on the right track is most bandwidth in the right place for the lowest capital cost.

Remember, Gogo was a very low latency network and that we hit the ground and we compete against. I mean it's lower latency than LEO, and that wasn't the right dimensional value.

In your balance probability, do you see yourself allocating capital into LEO from mobility in the medium term? It sounds like no. I mean that's obviously to Link 16.

I said we're interested in NGSO. We're interested in hybrid networks. We have discussions going on with NGSO providers about cooperating. So that's one way -- it's one way to fulfill it. We've been pretty clear, and I think it is look at research from Cisco or Sandvine or others that the low latency component of total broadband traffic is not a very big traction of the total. So we can certainly enter the market using third-party networks. Whether it makes sense for us to own only or just to get owner economics or because we can greatly improve the productivity compared to others, those are things that we're still looking at. But a lot of it will depend on when somebody can bring these things to market at scale and we get firm pricing on them. That will have an influence on whether or not we invest capital in it.

And our confidence that they're going to be there and we're counting on the most part of our network.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have time for one more caller, and that call is from Louie DiPalma with William Blair.

Many of the defense tech providers like Booz Allen, Parsons, ManTech and Mercury Systems are seeing funding and program delays. Are you seeing this as well even though your government division grew nicely during the quarter?

We talked about it last year, where we had seen some impact of both COVID and administration changes in terms of delays, but not really. I mean, I'd say it's not back to normal, but we've seen a lot of order flow in that business segment.

Sounds good. And for Mark, as it relates to space sustainability, do you think that there is a limit to the number of satellites that can ultimately go into LEO in order to keep everything sustainable and prevent collisions? And do you expect regulators to eventually like pause or even stop granting licenses because there's going to be so much traffic up there?

Okay. Yes. So it's a complicated question, but the simple answer is our number one is, yes. So the answer is yes, there's a limit to what's going to LEO. It's a little bit complicated because it's not only the number of satellites. It depends on things like the cross-sectional area of those satellites or what orbits they're in, how those orbits may overlap or intersect, what the mass of the satellites are. So I don't want to oversimplify. But yes, there's limits.

The FCC itself when it comes to the U.S. has said, well, 3x in proposed rulemakings or other proceedings that yes, there's a limit to the number of objects that can be in LEO. So I think it's only a question of time for people to start calculating what those limits are. I'd also refer you to research that others have published, including there's an NSF study that was done by [MIDER] that calculated for the number -- for satellites that are, let's say, have the same characteristics as Starlink in the roughly 600-kilometer orbit. It's like low tens of thousands of satellites before debris starts growing without bounds, and you can't even maintain that many satellites in orbit because of the collision problem and likelihood. So it's a real issue.

It's not just us that are saying -- I think we've been doing a lot of work to help compile and sort of correlate other people's inputs as well. But that is where things are headed. I think that the main issue -- one of the things that we're seeing with a lot of international operators, you're certainly seeing with Europe and the European Union is talking about having a constellation. And in other administrations as well is if there's a bounded number of satellites or think of satellites with given characteristics, how should that number be allocated among different countries? And then what tools do countries have to help us or what their rights are? And that is, I think, a rapidly evolving situation, but I think where it's headed is where you're seeing, which is that there will be limits to what can be put into orbit, very, very similar to what's been done with orbital slots and geosynchronous.

The other thing I would just add, we want to make it really clear. We're not against league house. We're for responsible approach to all over space. So back to underscore what Mark said.

That makes sense. And one last one. For Shawn, you discussed how you have $600 million in liquidity. Is that $600 million enough to fully fund the build-out of ViaSat-3? Or do you either need to raise more capital either from the debt market or as part of a potential divestiture?

Yes. So I think if you look at our performance, our operating performance and the cash generation and what we see is the trajectory of that as well. That plus the liquidity, we're in a really good position to fund out ViaSat-3. It's kind of consistent to what we told you guys last quarter.

It might take a different form other than just using revolver, but...

Yes, oh, absolutely. We want to make sure our cost of capital makes sense, but yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you, operator. Together with Mark and the rest of our team, thank you for joining us this afternoon. We had a strong quarter to start off the year, and our operating momentum is really positive. Hopefully, you heard that we're confident in our outlook, including achieving both near-term financial targets and our longer-term financial targets. We're really excited to bring ViaSat-3's capabilities to market. Our leadership team and our employees are diligently focused on executing to our plan. We want to say thank you to them. They've been working really hard through this pandemic and today. Don't hesitate to contact Peter or the rest of our team, Shawn or Paul if you guys have any other questions on our results or topics today, and we look forward to updating you on our continued progress next quarter. So with that, I hand it back to the operator. Thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.