Photo: Globalstar

Globalstar executives said the company is positioned to minimize financial impacts from tariffs, and reaffirmed its full-year guidance in first quarter financial results on May 8. The satellite operator increased revenue 6% year-over-year to $60 million. 

Most of the company’s revenue comes from satellite services, which grew 7% year-over-year to $57.1 million, with growth in wholesale capacity for Apple’s satellite messaging services. Globalstar said that Q1 was a full quarter of revenue from the expanded services agreement that began in March of 2024. 

Subscriber equipment sales totaled $3 million during the quarter. 

Commercial IoT service revenue increased 2% year-over-year and Globalstar expects activations to increase now that it has a two-way IoT module as part of its offerings. 

CFO Rebecca Clary said the company is positioned to “minimize any financial impact” from tariffs with its manufacturing and warehousing partners around the globe. 

If the tariff environment escalates, Clary said, Globalstar has contract manufacturing relationships that allow it to shift production. The company also uses international third party logistics partners to buy and sell in certain jurisdictions without impact from tariffs. “We believe we have the ability to pass through increased costs in areas where we are affected the most without impacting the competitiveness of our products,” Clary said. “We expect a relatively immaterial impact in the near term.” 

Iridium, which also sells satellite equipment, described a similar strategy earlier this month with using distribution partners to avoid tariffs on goods manufactured and sold outside of the U.S. 

Globalstar reaffirmed its financial outlook for the year of total revenue between $260 million and $285 million. This would be a roughly 9% year-over-year increase at the midpoint. 

During the first quarter, Globalstar signed with MDA Space to build its next generation Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation of 50 satellites, based on the reprogrammable Aurora satellite platform, the same satellite that Telesat Lightspeed is based on.

Globalstar has not announced a launch date for those satellites, and CEO Paul Jacobs told investors the company expects to announce more details on the launch date “soon.”