Inmarsat’s maritime revenues increased 7 percent to $95.4 million, primarily due to the elimination of volume discounts previously available for older services.

   Natixis IT Hardware and Satellite Equity Analyst Eric Beaudet said Inmarsat needed a strong maritime performance in the 2012 first quarter to rebound in key markets.

   “Indeed, growth has returned in the maritime segments, which is encouraging after the performance [in the full-year] 2011 period and underlines the group’s recent price increase strategy,” Beaudet said in a research note issued May 9. “This good performance was compensated by a 17.8 percent decline in Land Mobile services as Afghanistan and North Africa had very strong sales last year that were not repeated this time around.”

   Inmarsat CEO Rupert Pearce acknowledged that the growth in his company’s maritime data revenue resulted primarily from the impact of pricing initiatives, and that Inmarsat pushed the elimination of volume discounts for older services as an effort to encourage customer migration to its FleetBroadband service. 

   “In addition, we added 2,010 FleetBroadband terminals during the quarter, showing that take up of this service remains strong,” Pearce said in a statement. “Although maritime voice revenue was down year-over-year, this is largely due to the impact of voice price reductions implemented in the second quarter of 2011. While economic conditions in shipping remain challenging, we remain comfortable with the customer usage trends we are seeing and have a positive outlook for our maritime business in 2012.”

   Inmarsat’s core earnings as a group rose 1 percent to $205 million during the first quarter compared with the same period last year. The operator also reported subscriber growth of more than 10 percent in the first quarter. Pearce said Inmarsat’s stronger-than-expected subscriber growth underpinned its expectations for improved results in 2012.