Although ViaSat’s quarterly revenues increased 24 percent to $242 million and beat analysts expectations by 5 percent, ViaSat missed the consensus EBITDA forecast of $38.4 million by nearly $9 million. The company’s satellite services EBITDA dropped approximately 80 percent from $20.8 million in the same period last year to $4.4 million despite seemingly in-line subscriber adds and acquisition costs.

   Dankberg said higher selling, general and administrative expenses and a still-evolving consumer model contributed to the poor performance, but added that he expects sequential improvement moving forward.

   “In our satellite services segment, we are focused on the primary mission of adding subscribers, assessing the addressable market and confirming the unit economics that will transition us to profitable growth in subsequent periods,” said Dankberg. “While total subscriber acquisition costs are the primary driver of our higher operating loss for the quarter, our unit economics for acquiring new subscribers and servicing existing ones are consistent with our models — positioning us for steady sequential growth in adjusted EBITDA and earnings beginning in our fiscal second quarter.”

   ViaSat activated approximately 66,000 new subscriptions during the three-month period — a 35 percent increase from the previous quarter. The company’s net customer addition mark of 20,000, however, was well below the market forecast of 44,000 due to continued high migration off its legacy WildBlue services.

   The company did report a 23 percent year-over-year government segment revenue increase, representing the segment’s best performance in more than three years. ViaSat also achieved record orders and backlog in the quarter, despite a difficult budgetary environment in the government segment.

   Dankberg said that while the budget is a “wildcard” in its government segment, cost pressures have caused customers to turn to ViaSat for comms-on-the-move solutions. Raymond James Analyst Chris Quilty said he expects ViaSat’s profitability in this segment to slowly improve as consumer modem shipments ramp and research and development investments moderate in time. Quilty also remains cautious on the company’s long-term outlook.

   “While we like ViaSat’s long-term consumer opportunity, we believe that consensus growth expectations are still too high in light of ViaSat’s still-unresolved wholesale/retail distribution strategy and unproven retail profitability model,” Quilty said in an Aug. 3 research note.