Satellite News: What are your capital expenditure plans beyond the three satellites under construction?
Goldberg: Although we are investing in additional satellites to support our customers and growth plans, we have a strong focus throughout the company on delevering. As part of the Skynet transaction, we took on a significant amount of debt. We largely completed our financing activities towards the end of last year. We do have plans to complete a bond offering early in the year to replace certain bridge financing that is now in place. In light of the debt on our balance sheet, there is going to be a very disciplined focus on cash flow generation and delevering. In this regard, we have no committed capital expenditure plans at present beyond the three satellites presently under construction.
Satellite News: What trends do you see emerging on the fixed satellite service landscape over the next two years?
Goldberg: There has been a significant amount of talk about HDTV (high-definition TV) and the impact that is going to have on the satellite busness. I think the talk is justified. We are seeing HD take-up driving demand for our capacity and services today. Nimiq 4 and Nimiq 5 are about the introduction of additional HD services here in North America. We are going to continue to see more and more HD services as the content producers and broadcasters convert their studios and production chains to be more HD compatible. Certainly the growth in HD receivers in the market has been impressive, so HD is one important trend that is driving demand for our industry. My expectation is that is going to continue over the course of the next few years. In addition, we expect we'll continue to see growing demand from continued deregulation in certain parts of the world, strong demand in the natural resources exploration market given global demand for energy and minerals, greater penetration of satellite-delivered broadband services, and continued strong requirements from governments for commercial satellite capacity.
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