[05-21-12] ViaSat\u2019s<\/b> fourth-quarter earnings dropped from profit to loss due to increased operating costs associated with the launch of its Ka-band-powered Exede broadband service, according to its latest financial results issued May 18.<\/p>\n
The satellite and wireless communications provider reported a net loss of $7.4 million in its 2012 fourth-quarter, compared with a net income of $12.1 million in the same period last year. ViaSat did break analysts\u2019 fourth-quarter revenue projection of $229 million by $11 million, reaching $240.4 million in revenue during the period.
\n While ViaSat spent more money on its ViaSat-1 broadband platform, the company also surprised analysts by adding 49,000 Exede subscribers during the quarter, which effectively doubled the size of the company\u2019s subscriber base from the previous quarter.
\n ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg said his company would have been able to sign up even more Exede subscribers if not for delays in installations and rollout. \u201cThe demand we saw upon the introduction of the Exede service was really strong,\u201d said Dankberg. \u201cIt ramped quickly, and the fulfillment issues we had were based on the ability to schedule install appointments after orders.\u201d
\n Exede customers typically cost about $700 initially to acquire. Dankberg said he expects to continue to face higher expenses to sign up Exede customers during the next several quarters.
\n Though ViaSat began rolling out Exede in early January, the service was introduced in stages and wasn\u2019t fully available for the entire quarter. The service, powered by the ViaSat-1 high-throughput satellite launched in October, reached its full coverage area in early March.
\n ViaSat\u2019s long-term goal is to add 1 million Exede subscribers on ViaSat-1. It currently has approximately 385,000 subscribers from its WildBlue Communications subsidiary, which uses two older satellites in ViaSat\u2019s fleet.
\n In a May 18 research report, B. Riley & Co.<\/b> Analyst Mike Crawford said satellite Internet skeptics are wrong to argue that only rural households with no other option would sign up for Exede.
\n \u201cAbout one-third of ViaSat\u2019s Exede customers in the quarter had other broadband alternatives to choose from, such as 3G\/4G wireless or DSL,\u201d Crawford wrote in the report. \u201cViaSat said demand orders far exceeded installs, and they\u2019re looking to double the rate of installs. What that would mean is that in a couple of quarters, they would be adding 100,000 subscribers a quarter, or 30,000 a month.\u201d
\n ViaSat posted 2012 full-year sales of $864 million and earnings of $32.1 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[05-21-12] ViaSat\u2019s fourth-quarter earnings dropped from profit to loss due to increased operating costs associated with the launch of its Ka-band-powered Exede broadband service, according to its latest financial results issued May 18. The satellite and wireless communications provider reported a net loss of $7.4 million in its 2012 fourth-quarter, compared with a net […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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-83083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83083"}],"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=83083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}