Telesat’s Revenues Remain Stable, but Profitability a Concern
Telesat headquarters. Photo: Telesat.
Telesat reported its latest set of results, in which it saw total revenue remain relatively stable – with an increase in consolidated revenue, but a major dip in net income. Total revenue for the nine months to the end of September was $513 million (CA$671 million), a decrease of about $3 million (CA$4 million) compared to the same period in 2017. Although when adjusted for foreign exchange rates, revenue rose $5.35 million (CA$7 million) compared to the same period last year.
Net income for the nine month period was $73.4 million (CA$96 million), compared to net income of $331.1 million (CA$433 million) for the same period in 2017. According to the release, the decrease in net income was principally the result of foreign exchange losses in the first nine months of 2018, arising from the translation of Telesat’s U.S. dollar denominated debt into Canadian dollars compared to foreign exchange gains in the first nine months of 2017.
Telesat President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dan Goldberg commented, “In addition to achieving solid financial results, we took a number of concrete steps to strengthen our business and position the company for the future. We successfully launched our state-of-the-art Telstar 19 Vantage and Telstar 18 Vantage satellites in the quarter and they are both now in commercial service. We also continued the development of our planned Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation and, using our in-orbit Phase 1 LEO satellite, demonstrated some of the key advantages of LEO in a recent customer trial. Looking ahead, we remain focused on increasing the utilization of our in-orbit satellites and executing on our key growth initiatives.”