Iridium <\/b>reported modest revenue growth of 5% year-over-year in 2024, reaffirming its plan to reach $1 billion in service revenue in 2030. CEO Matt Desch also provided an update on the company\u2019s direct-t0-device efforts, anticipating starting testing this summer. <\/p>\n
Iridium reported full-year financial results on Feb. 13, reporting $830.7 million in revenue. While not as strong a rate of growth as previous years, $831 million is still record annual revenue for the company. In 2023, Iridium grew revenue 10% year-over-year, and in 2022 the company grew revenue 17% year-over-year. <\/p>\n
Net income in 2024 was $112.8 million,<\/p>\n
OEBITDA of $470.6 million was slightly down year-over-year \u2014 a 2% increase from the prior year. <\/p>\n
CEO Matt Desch told investors on Thursday that OEBITDA and service revenue growth was impacted by voice and data price actions in 2023, reworking the company\u2019s direct-to-device offering, and the accounting impact of extending the life of its satellites. Desch said year-over-year comparisons after a post-pandemic increase in equipment ordering returned to normal. <\/p>\n
\u201cHaving now cleared these headwinds, you should expect Iridium\u2019s OEBITDA to start returning back to historical growth trends,\u201d Desch said. <\/p>\n
Iridium continues to see the most growth in Commercial IoT data \u2014 reporting 18% growth year-over-year. Iridium reported subscribers grew 10% during 2024 to 1,887,000 customers, driven by continued growth in consumer personal communications devices.<\/p>\n
Overall, Iridium grew its subscriber base 8% in 2024, ending the fourth quarter with 2,460,000 total billable subscribers. <\/p>\n
Iridium provided guidance for 2025, anticipating total service revenue growth between 5% and 7% for full-year 2025. Iridium projects full-year 2025 OEBITDA between $490 million and $500 million.<\/p>\n
In addition, Iridium returned $140 million to shareholders through dividends and its share repurchase program. In 2024, the company retired almost 14 million shares.<\/p>\n
Desch also provided an update on Iridium\u2019s direct-to-device initiative, Iridium NTN Direct, which will use 3GPP standards. Desch said the company expects to do testing with chips from at least one supplier as early as summer, and plans to support commercial launches in 2026. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn our opinion, service coverage will remain the biggest challenge for early adopters of D2D services. Iridium is unique among other D2D players in that we remain the only L-band satellite company with a LEO constellation in orbit today, a global allocation of spectrum, and a path to offer reliable standards-based connectivity to end user markets around the world,\u201d Desch said. <\/p>\n
Desch also addressed a recent demonstration showing how to intercept messages sent via Iridium\u2019s constellation, which has generated news coverage. Desch pointed out that Iridium\u2019s network is not encrypted and it is not a surprise the communications can be intercepted. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur network is not encrypted by default,\u201d he said. \u201cBut all of our partners, including the government, can encrypt traffic that they want to maintain and do. Describing this is somehow a fundamental flaw of our network was sort of strange to me. \u2026 Everyone who works with us knows exactly how our network works.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iridium reported modest revenue growth of 5% year-over-year in 2024, reaffirming its plan to reach $1 billion in service revenue in 2030. CEO Matt Desch also provided an update on the company\u2019s direct-t0-device efforts, anticipating starting testing this summer. Iridium reported full-year financial results on Feb. 13, reporting $830.7 million in revenue. While not as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}