Viasat’s Real-Time Earth network has antenna installations like this one in place around the globe. Photo: Viasat

Viasat posted $1.1 billion in sales in the second quarter of its fiscal year 2026, up 2% year-over-year, driven by growth in the defense segment. Viasat held its Q2 results on Friday Nov. 7, while it awaits the second ViaSat-3 satellite launch, after United Launch Alliance (ULA) scrubbed the launch twice last week. 

On a Friday call with investors, Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg indicated the launch could take place around this Friday. 

Viasat’s Defense and Advanced Technologies (DAT) segment drove growth in Q2 with a 3% year-over-year revenue increase to $304 million. DAT backlog increased to a record of $1.2 billion, up 31% year-over-year and up 14% sequentially.

Dankberg told investors that DAT demand is being driven by trends like a reliance on space-based assets for national security purposes, and demand for highly resilient communications that integrate both terrestrial and satellite and multi-domain operations. 

CFO Garrett Chase told investors he doesn’t see the U.S. government shutdown as having a “major impact” to Viasat’s results, he estimated it could delay awards for the DAT segment of up to $100 million and impact DAT adjusted EBITDA by up to $20 million.

Viasat has a strategic review underway, which Dankberg said includes the potential to separate out Viasat’s commercial and government businesses. An investor group recently argued that Viasat’s defense business is undervalued. 

Viasat’s Commercial Services business grew revenue 1% year-over-year to $837 million. Aviation and Government Satcom grew revenue, while Maritime revenue dipped and Fixed Services declined nearly 16% year-over-year. 

Aviation revenue grew 15% as Viasat brought around 200 commercial aircraft into service during the quarter, combined with higher average revenue per aircraft. Viasat reported that Q2 was the strongest quarter of aircraft installations since the fourth quarter of fiscal year ‘24. 

Company-wide, backlog at the end of the quarter was $3.9 billion, up about $140 million despite Viasat selling an energy system integration business last year, which reduced backlog by $106 million. Net loss was $61 million, an improvement of $76 million in the same time last year. 

With EchoStar’s recent spectrum sales to SpaceX and reports that Globalstar is considering a sale, Dankberg was asked about Viasat’s spectrum position. 

He sees the company’s spectrum as put to good use providing critical services in maritime, aviation, and land mobile, with the particular benefit of it being high-priority, global spectrum. Dankberg talked about how Viasat plans to evolve its services. 

“What we’re looking at is a combination of evolving those services to fulfill the demands of the aviation industry and the maritime industry, while also being able to support the network standards that enable this large potential direct-to-device market,” Dankberg said. 

Dankberg added he sees the applications that will drive these use cases as largely in autonomy — vehicular autonomy, aeronautical autonomy, maritime autonomy. “More edge-based AI applications that all those things are going to leverage both terrestrial mobility where available as well as space,” he said.