Rendering of Iridium’s constellation. Photo: Iridium

Iridium reported modest revenue growth of 5% year-over-year in 2024, reaffirming its plan to reach $1 billion in service revenue in 2030. CEO Matt Desch also provided an update on the company’s direct-t0-device efforts, anticipating starting testing this summer. 

Iridium reported full-year financial results on Feb. 13, reporting $830.7 million in revenue. While not as strong a rate of growth as previous years, $831 million is still record annual revenue for the company. In 2023, Iridium grew revenue 10% year-over-year, and in 2022 the company grew revenue 17% year-over-year.

Net income in 2024 was $112.8 million,

OEBITDA of $470.6 million was slightly down year-over-year — a 2% increase from the prior year. 

CEO Matt Desch told investors on Thursday that OEBITDA and service revenue growth was impacted by voice and data price actions in 2023, reworking the company’s direct-to-device offering, and the accounting impact of extending the life of its satellites. Desch said year-over-year comparisons after a post-pandemic increase in equipment ordering returned to normal. 

“Having now cleared these headwinds, you should expect Iridium’s OEBITDA to start returning back to historical growth trends,” Desch said. 

Iridium continues to see the most growth in Commercial IoT data — reporting 18% growth year-over-year. Iridium reported subscribers grew 10% during 2024 to 1,887,000 customers, driven by continued growth in consumer personal communications devices.

Overall, Iridium grew its subscriber base 8% in 2024, ending the fourth quarter with 2,460,000 total billable subscribers. 

Iridium provided guidance for 2025, anticipating total service revenue growth between 5% and 7% for full-year 2025. Iridium projects full-year 2025 OEBITDA between $490 million and $500 million.

In addition, Iridium returned $140 million to shareholders through dividends and its share repurchase program. In 2024, the company retired almost 14 million shares.

Desch also provided an update on Iridium’s direct-to-device initiative, Iridium NTN Direct, which will use 3GPP standards. Desch said the company expects to do testing with chips from at least one supplier as early as summer, and plans to support commercial launches in 2026. 

“In our opinion, service coverage will remain the biggest challenge for early adopters of D2D services. Iridium is unique among other D2D players in that we remain the only L-band satellite company with a LEO constellation in orbit today, a global allocation of spectrum, and a path to offer reliable standards-based connectivity to end user markets around the world,” Desch said. 

Desch also addressed a recent demonstration showing how to intercept messages sent via Iridium’s constellation, which has generated news coverage. Desch pointed out that Iridium’s network is not encrypted and it is not a surprise the communications can be intercepted. 

“Our network is not encrypted by default,” he said. “But all of our partners, including the government, can encrypt traffic that they want to maintain and do. Describing this is somehow a fundamental flaw of our network was sort of strange to me. … Everyone who works with us knows exactly how our network works.”