Earnings Call Transcript - IRDM Q1 2026

Operator, Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Iridium Communications First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kenneth Levy, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kenneth Levy, Vice President, Investor Relations

Thanks, Dave. Good morning, and welcome to Iridium's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Joining me on the call this morning are our CEO, Matthew Desch; and our CFO, Vincent O'Neill. Today's call will begin with a discussion of our first quarter results followed by Q&A. I trust you've had the opportunity to review this morning's earnings release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of Iridium's website. Before I turn things over to Matt, I'd like to caution all participants that our call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical fact and could include statements about our future expectations, plans and prospects. Such forward-looking statements are based upon our current beliefs and expectations and are subject to risks, which could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements. Such risks are more fully discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our remarks today should be considered in light of such risks. Any forward-looking statements represent views only as of today, and while we may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so even if our views or expectations change. During the call, we'll also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including operational EBITDA and pro forma free cash flow. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Please refer to today's earnings release and the Investor Relations section of our website for further explanation of these non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, let me turn things over to Matt.

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Ken. Good morning, everyone. We've had a good start to the year, and our results are right where we expected them to be. Total revenue grew 2% as did service revenue. We're reiterating our guidance for the year, and Vince will give you the details in a minute. We continue to have some important new products under development for introduction this year, and they're driving a lot of activity with our partner base. In the IoT area, our new tri-mode module, which we call the Iridium 9604, is on track for commercial availability in June, and our beta partners are now testing and preparing their first products using our next-gen platform. The 9604 combines our satellite IoT service, cellular IoT and GPS all in a very small and cost-effective package and is generating a lot of excitement across our partner ecosystem. We believe the module also has the horsepower to consolidate a number of our other legacy services over time, and that can be helpful to our sustaining costs and to simplify our portfolio. In the PNT area, the announcement of our new PNT ASIC rolling out in July is also generating a lot of inbound activity and attracting a number of new partners who are looking to integrate this technology into their products. GNSS disruptions around the world are highlighting the need for new assured PNT solutions for drones and autonomous vehicles, shipping companies and their insurance providers, critical infrastructure in the U.S. and abroad, and commercial aviation; the opportunities are expanding. Over 100 new companies have expressed interest in the ASIC and we expect the commercial launch to drive deployments once it's in the market. Of course, our new Iridium NTN Direct standards-based service has generated a lot of activity as it progresses closer to commercial launch later this year. We've been demonstrating live over-the-air to mobile network operators and partners and its performance has been impressing everyone, even as we make enhancements and further tune the service. We've been expanding agreements with more MNOs, having signed seven to date with a number of others in the pipeline. There's clear demand from MNOs to roam onto Iridium's network when their customers find themselves out of coverage. We're also in discussions with additional chip and module manufacturers to have their 3GPP Release 19 chips with Iridium capability available in 2027 and have gained support from the test community as well. It's been a big job for Iridium to reprogram our satellites and build cloud-based processing and standards capabilities into our gateway, and I'm very proud of my team for accomplishing so much so quickly. Iridium is positioned as complementary to the big B2B services that are emerging from Starlink, AST, and now Amazon. As these companies focus on connecting smartphones from space, we will continue to focus on scalable specialty applications that support low-cost IoT, particularly for industrial and government markets where reliability and coverage are critical. While I talked about some of the new products we have underway this year to drive growth, our partners are also making progress on products and certifications that will resonate with their target markets. They include launching some new terminals in the maritime GMDSS area and conducting flight trials for certification of our new Iridium aviation safety service. More broadly, I want to remind you of the four growth factors I talked about on our fourth quarter call in February. These are areas where we're prioritizing investments and where there is significant opportunity to expand our revenues even as more competition eventually comes to the satellite sector. First, in IoT, we are by far the leader in satellite IoT in terms of subscribers, revenues and technology partners. We believe that as we reduce costs by adopting standard 3GPP protocols, we will see continued success and growth. We are already pursuing cost-sensitive use cases that were more difficult to address with proprietary services like automotive, smart meters, agriculture and expanded asset tracking. Our network reliability, global coverage, partner ecosystem and strong brand position will allow us to continue to expand our revenues, particularly when we add our second growth vector, PNT, into the mix. I've already talked about how our new PNT ASIC is expanding our pipeline of opportunities. It's also attracting major chip makers earlier than we expected as these manufacturers eventually incorporate our PNT IP into their standard GNSS chips. We think our business could really expand as a result. We provided guidance on the revenue potential expected in this area over the next four years, and I'm as bullish about meeting those targets as I've ever been. Some early customers are starting slowly, but they are committed to the big rollout that we've been expecting. We also believe that our engineering and development work on new identity management and trusted location products could open up some very big new markets. We remain in the early phases of business development for these important services, but the opportunities are exciting. Our third growth area is national security missions with the U.S. government and is building off our success with the EMSS contract with the Space Force and the competency we've demonstrated in developing and operating the satellite operation centers. We see a growing need for commercial satcom providers to complement Starlink and other broadband networks that are becoming part of the government-based data network or SDN. We have a growing pipeline of work in this area. Some of it will generate service revenue but also fast-growing engineering and support work. Requirements for Golden Dome are just now taking shape and we think Iridium is well positioned there. Finally, aviation safety is an area of distinction for us and, of course, a factor for growth. We have a great position in this industry with our equity interest and strong relationship with Aireon as well as our ability to be certified to connect pilots and air traffic controllers by satellite. Our efforts to develop some differentiated products that could bring more value to airlines are still in the early stages, but we are increasingly confident about our potential to disrupt the status quo in the market. I want to acknowledge all the attention that mobile satellite services has been getting of late, especially in light of Amazon's plans to purchase Globalstar. People have realized the importance and significance of L-band spectrum as it relates to connecting consumer devices on a global basis from space when out of coverage from cell towers, which happens over more than 85% of the planet's surface. We share this view of the value of this spectrum. Regardless, our priority today is to focus on expanding into these four growth areas while maintaining our revenue base and legacy services. We believe that this is the right direction for Iridium, and we'll continue to stay focused on execution across the business. So we're off to a good start in 2026. Partner activity remains strong, and we continue to generate a lot of cash that we plan to invest in our growth factors. I look forward to providing more updates on our progress in the coming quarters. Now let me turn the call over to Vince for details on the quarter. Vince?

Vincent O'Neill, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I'll start my remarks today by reviewing Iridium's financial results for the first quarter and some trends we're seeing within our major business lines. I'll also provide an update on Iridium's leverage and capital position and discuss our outlook for the balance of the year. OEBITDA was $116.3 million in the first quarter, down 5% from the prior year period. The change largely reflected the impact of the shift to pay annual incentive compensation entirely in cash, which I previewed on our fourth quarter call. This resulted in a $4.2 million hit to OEBITDA this quarter and will have a full year impact of $17 million in 2026. This quarter's OEBITDA also reflects the benefit of a 2% increase in service revenue and ongoing growth in engineering and support. On the commercial side of our business, service revenues were up 2% to $130.4 million. This was in line with our forecast and reflected growth in commercial IoT and voice and data during the quarter. Voice and data revenue rose 3% from a year earlier to $57.4 million, driven by the price actions we implemented last summer. This drove a 7% increase in ARPU from the year earlier. Net subscriber trends had improved from the year-ago period when headwinds were primarily associated with a higher level of seasonal deactivations. Commercial IoT revenue was $46 million in the first quarter, up 5% from a year earlier. Net subscriber numbers this quarter have largely stabilized following last year's volatility related to a modification to retail pricing plans by one of our large consumer-oriented partners. As Matt noted, we are now in bigger trials of the new hybrid modem, the Iridium 9604, which combines cellular, satellite and GPS in one engineered solution. Early feedback has been great and we expect that the lower overall integration cost of incorporating this chip will help to accelerate subscriber growth. Commercial broadband was down 5% from the year-ago period, and continues to reflect the ongoing impact from customer conversions to lower-cost backup services, a trend we've discussed previously. Hosting and other data services revenue was $14.8 million this quarter, down about 1% from last year's comparable quarter. The decline mostly reflects the timing of expected payments related to activities with an existing non-PNT customer. We continue to be encouraged by the ever-increasing interest we are seeing for Iridium's assured PNT solution to address the vulnerabilities inherent to GPS and GNSS-based systems. The introduction of our PNT ASIC this July is expected to accelerate growth and expedite the pace of deployment of Iridium PNT solutions. We continue to have conviction that PNT will drive at least $100 million in annual revenue for Iridium by 2030. Government service revenue was up modestly in the first quarter to $27.6 million reflecting the final step-up in our EMSS contract last September. Turning to subscriber equipment, sales were $20.2 million in the first quarter, largely in line with our expectations. Engineering and support revenue was $40.8 million in Q1 as compared to $37.5 million in the prior year period. This rise in revenue continues to reflect Iridium's growing scope of work with the Space Development Agency and supports our strategic focus on revenue growth tied to national security missions. As noted in this morning's earnings release, we are affirming our full year guidance for both service revenue and OEBITDA. I'd like to take a minute to review some of the drivers underlying this year's forecast. Starting with our commercial business in voice and data, we expect revenue to grow in the first half of the year, benefiting from the price actions implemented last summer. As a result of these actions, we would expect ARPU to remain about $48 for the remainder of the year, consistent with our first quarter ARPU. IoT revenue is expected to grow in the mid-single digits. As Matt noted, we are deep in testing of the next generation IoT modem and are targeting new markets and use cases that are highly sensitive to cost, form factor design and integration timelines. Based upon the positive feedback we are getting on the Iridium 9604, we believe it fills the gap in the satellite IoT market for utility at a value price. In our broadband business, we expect maritime customers to continue to move to lower-cost backup plans. However, the introduction of new partner terminals combining Iridium service and GMDSS safety services will act as a tailwind for new subscriber growth and, over time, help to offset current ARPU pressures. We continue to believe that Iridium will remain an important player in the maritime sector. With regards to our government business, we have started discussions on our successor contracts with the U.S. government and continue to expect they will exercise their option to extend the EMSS contracts for a period of six months at current rates. Accordingly, we expect EMSS revenue of $110.5 million this year, even as we expand our relationship with the U.S. government with incremental engineering work. As Matt discussed, we get a lot of inbound interest on our PNT solution. We continue to believe that this strong interest, along with the availability of our PNT this summer, may provide upside to our full year hosted payload and other data revenue forecast. We also expect that the strong trend we saw in engineering and support in the first quarter will continue. This momentum is tied to our work with the Space Development Agency and should support another year of record engineering growth. As I noted earlier, Iridium will introduce a number of new terminals and modems this year. Our focus on lower cost hardware should broaden our sales funnel and allow Iridium to extend its satellite solutions to customers that have not historically considered non-terrestrial services. We continue to expect full year subscriber equipment sales will be in line with historical levels between $80 million to $90 million in 2026. SG&A growth in Q1 was more pronounced than we expect for the balance of the year, largely due to the timing benefit of program expenses in the first quarter of 2025, the nonrecurring nature of some expenses incurred this quarter and the increase in sales costs tied to stock price appreciation this year. Going forward, we expect the SG&A run rate to moderate to low double digits in 2026 though stock appreciation could result in additional sales expense. Taken together, this outlook supports our forecast for flat to 2% growth in service revenue in 2026 and for operational EBITDA between $480 million and $490 million this year. I would again remind you that starting in 2026, Iridium will pay annual incentive compensation entirely in cash rather than a mix of equity and cash as was the company's prior practice. This change is projected to have a $17 million impact to OEBITDA in 2026. Without this change, OEBITDA would have been projected to be in the range of $497 million to $507 million in 2026. I hope this color is helpful as you chart our progress and update the financial models for our first quarter results. Moving to our capital position. As of March 31, Iridium had cash and cash equivalents balance of $111.6 million and ended the quarter with a net leverage of 3.4x OEBITDA. Our strong free cash flow provides significant flexibility to reduce net leverage quickly. We also have flexibility to utilize our strong liquidity position to invest in business growth opportunities through product investments or even to tackle acquisitions. On March 31, Iridium made a quarterly dividend payment of $0.15 per share to shareholders. We remain committed to an active and growing dividend program and expect the Board will continue to grow Iridium's dividend, consistent with prior years. Capital expenditures in the first quarter were $30 million. As we've noted previously, we anticipate CapEx this year to be consistent with 2025 levels to support our work on Iridium NTN Direct. Turning to our pro forma free cash flow, we present a detailed description of our cash flow metrics, along with the reconciliation to GAAP measures in a supplemental presentation under the Events tab on our Investor Relations website. In those materials, we project pro forma free cash flow of about $318 million for 2026. Based upon our expectations for Iridium's growth, we expect to have the capacity to generate at least $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion of free cash flow over the balance of the decade. Iridium occupies a unique position in the satellite market, and we remain very excited about our prospects for incremental top line growth and shareholder value creation. With that, I'll turn things back to the operator and look forward to your questions.

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from Brent Penter with Raymond James.

Brent Penter, Analyst, Raymond James

Matt, you touched on the Amazon acquisition of Globalstar. I'd like to hit on that a little bit more. First, could you expand on what you think that deal signals about the value of Iridium and the MSS spectrum that you own? And then second, how do you expect Amazon owning Globalstar may or may not change the competitive landscape of the markets you operate in?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think in general, it speaks to the value of the L-band spectrum that we occupy. More so, it speaks to the opportunity that I think the industry, and certainly Amazon, feels about the potential for global direct-to-device services in the coming years. I think it's healthy for the industry to get another big competitor. I think it will create more opportunities and expand the potential for that market more greatly. I'm not sure what was the second part of your question, Brent?

Brent Penter, Analyst, Raymond James

Yes, you started to hit on it.

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

I don't think it changes really anything for us competitively that dramatically. As I said, we're really positioned to be complementary. We started pivoting well over a year ago towards those areas where we believe we can create a differentiated advantage, whether it be aviation or national security missions or PNT, IoT, et cetera. In those areas, we feel really good regardless of how many large operators there are in the more direct-to-device space. So I don't think it changes things dramatically.

Operator, Operator

And the next question comes from Chris Quilty with Quilty Space.

Christopher Quilty, Analyst, Quilty Space

Matt, maybe a little bit of a follow-up on that. Does Amazon's acquisition of Globalstar in any way effectively kill the potential for a big LEO processing round in your opinion?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Describe what a big LEO processing round would be.

Christopher Quilty, Analyst, Quilty Space

Well, SpaceX had been looking to reopen the big L-band round and now you've got Amazon that's just committed to a large sum to take a position there. Presumably, you wouldn't get a new round to review that spectrum at a time when there's an ongoing acquisition associated with it, right?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

So that's kind of a fine detail overall. Our position is more spectrum for mobile satellite services and D2D would be a good thing. We continue to lobby for more spectrum for the industry in general, whether it be for direct-to-device or for other consumer-friendly applications. I don't know if it makes a new round more likely or less likely; I think in general it's a good thing. It does create more competition and a better funded competitor in the D2D area, but I don't know what that will mean for the FCC or for spectrum policy at this point.

Christopher Quilty, Analyst, Quilty Space

Got you. And Vince affirmed the $100 million for the PNT business in 2030, but you've gotten off to a slow start with customers. To hit that target, do you expect that as customers roll on, there are going to be sort of chunky step-function pickups in revenue? Or does this grow on a per-subscriber basis where it starts slowly and then ramps up?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

I think it's going to be both. I think you'll see some large movements as some major customers come on and take global business opportunities. And I think you'll also see broad-based subscriber-by-subscriber growth. The number of companies integrating solutions right now is strong — the activity around our discussions is unusually high. It just takes time for these devices to proliferate the market and to create the kind of growth we're expecting. A lot of that will be accelerated by the ASIC. That wasn't completely required, but it is definitely an accelerator.

Christopher Quilty, Analyst, Quilty Space

Got you. And final question. You mentioned lower cost for the 9604 in terms of your partners' implementation costs. Can you give us a sense of this — is it 10% cheaper or 50% cheaper? And can you also touch on supply constraints that you've historically had or not in ramping that up versus something that's standards-based — how fast do you think the product can be adopted and delivered?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Well, in terms of pricing, it all depends on volume. At very high volumes, it could be significantly less expensive than our legacy portfolio, the 9602 and 9603. The 9604 being built on a more global platform that's utilized for many other applications means that the cost overall is lower. And of course, the fact that it integrates multiple technologies into the same platform means it's not a one-for-one replacement. It includes capabilities that would otherwise require separate cellular and GNSS modules. So it's really a fraction of the overall cost of the three solutions together. I don't want to pin an exact percent — it depends on volumes and customer specifics — but it's a significant reduction, especially at scale. In terms of supply and adoption, because it's standards-based, it should be quicker to adopt and easier to ramp than proprietary solutions. The terms of standardization and broader manufacturer support generally make it faster to get into products, but adoption timelines still depend on partner development cycles and certifications.

Christopher Quilty, Analyst, Quilty Space

No, I was going to say, so it's lower cost hardware going into lower-cost applications. Typically, we'd expect the ARPU to go down. But if you're bundling in additional capabilities like PNT, where does the ARPU go? Does it hold steady, go up or go down?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

I think it can support both low and high ARPU applications. ARPU is somewhat irrelevant by itself — it's all about incremental earnings and what kind of resources of our network the application uses. Typically, low ARPU applications use almost no resources of our network, while higher ARPU applications use more. The important part is that it expands the use cases. When you add that together with our NTN Direct service and standards-based chips, which are low cost, there's almost no integration cost for many customers — often they're just upgrading chipsets and can roll onto our network with minimal additional expense. That opens up large industrial customers who are uncomfortable with proprietary standards. For example, automotive discussions we're having are surprising to me; these are high-volume opportunities that could be efficient users of a standards-based solution. So it's not merely a matter of ARPU going down or up. Incremental ARPU in some applications may be lower, but overall revenue growth is the important metric.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank.

Edison Yu, Analyst, Deutsche Bank

I wanted to sort of come back to the Amazon/Globalstar question from a slightly different perspective. Is there any sort of industrial logic to having that full L-band block that you currently share at 0.95 with Globalstar? Does that make any sense to kind of combine it? Would there be any sort of synergies that you could derive from just kind of technically speaking?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Yes. That thesis has been described quite fully by analysts and others in the industry, and I really need to be careful not to comment too much on ongoing transactions or discussions. I don't want to sound like I'm promoting or highlighting something I'm not comfortable doing in the current environment.

Edison Yu, Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Understood. Second topic, there was some news about a drone outage. I'm sure you've probably done work there. Have there been any updates on the regulatory front or any recent discussions since the last quarter on drones?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

You mentioned a drone outage at another company. That obviously highlights potential opportunities for us. The drone environment for us is really hot. Both integrating our communication technologies into drones as a primary or backup source, and our PNT technologies, makes a lot of sense as one of the technologies to maintain trusted location. There's a lot of focus on the Middle East and other areas right now where drones are being operated. I'm equally excited about the commercial side of drones, which needs these technologies as well with the new FAA Part 107 rules expected later this year that finally open up beyond-visual-line-of-sight commercial drones. Iridium technology makes a lot of sense there. There is a lot of activity around that, both for the 9604 or 9704 — which is the higher-speed IoT product — and our Iridium NTN Direct. And of course, lots of discussion around PNT to protect the integrity of location.

Operator, Operator

And the next question comes from Hamed Khorsand with BWS.

Hamed Khorsand, Analyst, BWS

Just want to understand what you're seeing on the subscriber end on the commercial IoT? Is any of that coming from the consumer side? Or is this purely coming from industrial customers?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

It's actually coming from both. This year it looks more broad-based than last year, when a large partner's pricing change distorted the subscriber numbers. We're seeing healthy subscriber growth similar to 2022–2024, and it's coming from both industrial and consumer segments.

Hamed Khorsand, Analyst, BWS

Okay. And then could you just talk about this EMSS contract that you're saying would require a six-month extension? Is that just the same aspect that happened a few years ago when you were going through the renegotiation process?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Our current EMSS contract, which was a seven-year contract, is approaching its final year, but there's an option for the customer to extend it at the current rates for an extra six months if negotiations aren't completed in time. That has happened in the last three contract renewals that I've been a part of, and I'm expecting it to happen again, particularly if the customer doesn't see the need to finalize a new contract immediately.

Operator, Operator

And the next question comes from Tim Horan with Oppenheimer.

Timothy Horan, Analyst, Oppenheimer

It seems like if you can get your PNT better than every GPS chip out there, the market is orders of magnitude bigger. I would say the same thing for IoT. Can you describe a little more detail where you are in getting it adopted in the standards? And related to that, could you become a standard GPS replacement globally? And how do you think about pricing in that environment? Because the lower you price it, the more likely you are to become the standard replacement. I know this is a complex question, but any thoughts would be helpful.

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Be careful with the word 'replace' — our goal is to be an alternative augmentation to GPS, not necessarily to replace it. We are working to get our PNT technology embedded into mainstream GNSS chipsets. Several suppliers who supply the majority of chipsets for consumer products are now in discussions with us about integrating our capabilities into their chips. The ASIC has made the technical attributes more visible and generated interest. Also, 6G work includes the idea of enhanced PNT, and we're working to get our technology embedded in those standards as well. Currently, we are not as accurate as GPS in all scenarios, but our signals are much more difficult to jam or spoof and can be encrypted. We have plans to make our system more accurate, which would require additional payloads in space; we're in early-stage thinking about that and believe it could be done cost-effectively. That would be a multi-year effort and more of a 2030-type discussion. The potential market impact from higher-accuracy PNT and from identity management and trusted location products could be enormous, but it's early stage.

Timothy Horan, Analyst, Oppenheimer

And can you give us some color of the same concept for your IoT communications — what would it take to get really strong growth where your technology is embedded in other chips rather than just using customized ASICs?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Iridium NTN Direct is about being embedded into standard chipsets. Several prolific terrestrial IoT chip manufacturers are already in the process of developing chips that include our capability. When those chips get into products, customers can roll onto a satellite network more easily. That expands the market tremendously. There will be some cannibalization of legacy services, but we believe the market expansion will far exceed that. The 9604 and other products also provide tremendous value and will continue alongside standards-based chips.

Timothy Horan, Analyst, Oppenheimer

Lastly on spectrum, there is concern that maybe your spectrum has already been utilized and couldn't be ported over to other constellations or used for other purposes. Any thoughts on that?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Our spectrum is being utilized and it's generating a lot of cash and revenue. I don't apologize for that. We have a very efficient network architecture: our satellites are regenerative, they can utilize spectrum on a message-by-message basis and can be highly configured, controlled and automated in a way that is extremely efficient, and we've only improved that over time. We believe we have enough spectrum to handle our growth plans and we have plans to create more capacity through capital expenditure and next-generation constellation designs. The most inefficient user of our spectrum historically was our broadband service, which is in decline, and that shift is creating capacity for IoT and PNT services. In theory, we could allocate some of our spectrum to other applications, but our priority is to maximize shareholder value. If we were ever to engage commercially in sharing or leasing spectrum, it would be in a way that preserves service for our customers and partners and that we manage carefully.

Operator, Operator

And the next question comes from James Ratzer with New Street Research.

James Ratzer, Analyst, New Street Research

My question is a direct follow-on from that last one to understand a bit more about the capacity utilization on your network. Can you quantify any further, at peak hour or in global hotspots, what percentage of your capacity is currently being used? And as you roll out the new services toward the end of the decade, how do you see capacity utilization evolving over the next four to five years?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

It's a complicated question. Our network reassigns itself every 90 milliseconds, so its ability to handle traffic varies moment by moment and position by position. We don't have any brownouts today. We are one of the most efficient users of spectrum on the planet. We would like more spectrum, but we believe we have enough to handle our growth plans with our next-generation system. There are areas of higher utilization and areas of lower utilization. One of the positive dynamics is the decline in our legacy broadband usage, which was an inefficient user of spectrum, and that is freeing capacity for efficient applications like IoT and PNT. We can repack spectrum and create new services within our existing band. Regarding future constellations, I've challenged the team with a 10x capacity increase. Designs we're discussing with smaller, many-satellite approaches could require roughly four times the satellites we currently operate but would expand capacity greatly with new antenna technologies and smaller beams on the ground. We're excited about some of the technologies available that can lower cost for launch and satellite buses compared to previous generations.

James Ratzer, Analyst, New Street Research

I get it. One last quick follow-up: as you upgrade your satellite constellation, what kind of capacity increase are you planning for — is it a 2x, 4x, 10x type of plan?

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Designs we're talking about could provide multiple times the current capacity. I mentioned I've challenged the team with 10x. Current designs we're exploring may be around four times the number of satellites and would provide a substantial capacity increase. We're not committing to a program today; it's a multi-year planning effort, but we see the potential for a large capacity increase with modern architectures and launches.

Operator, Operator

Our final questions come from Justin Lang with Morgan Stanley.

Justin Lang, Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Matt, just staying on the topic of spectrum and any potential arrangement with a third party. How should we think about the fact that you have government users relying on the network? I'm not sure we've seen that dynamic to the same extent with other spectrum that's recently transacted. How does that factor into the considerations, if at all?

Vincent O'Neill, Chief Financial Officer

It's a great consideration, and anything we would do would have to ensure it would not hurt our ability to operate our network in the future for one of our most important customers or for any of our customers.

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

One of the reasons we'd want to be intimately involved in any partnering arrangement is to be able to evolve services seamlessly for our customer and partner base, which is the most extensive in the industry. There will be a lot of demand by our partners, whether government or industrial, for future standards-based services. We think we could be extremely valuable in terms of managing that transition over the next ten years. So it's not an issue we see as insurmountable, and it shouldn't be a concern for customers if we ever pursue arrangements that involve our spectrum; we'd manage the transition carefully.

Justin Lang, Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great. That's perfect color. Maybe one for Vince actually: the larger PNT order you've anticipated has moved around quarter-to-quarter. Any update on the timing expectations?

Vincent O'Neill, Chief Financial Officer

No, Justin, it's pretty much the same as we discussed on our February call. As I highlighted in my prepared remarks, we do think there's potential upside to our 2026 guide from PNT, but it would be premature to include that in the outlook at this point.

Justin Lang, Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it. So that order is not factored into the guide or the outlook today, right?

Vincent O'Neill, Chief Financial Officer

That's right.

Operator, Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Matthew Desch, Chief Executive Officer

Well, there's certainly a lot of interest in our spectrum. We certainly agree it does have a lot of value, and the recent activity has demonstrated that. But I want to reiterate, we're really heads down and focused on organic growth, the investments we're making in our four growth pillars and the new products we have coming out. I'm really looking forward to continuing to talk about that in coming quarters as we demonstrate our continued ability to grow. Thank you for being on the call and I look forward to talking to all of you.

Operator, Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.