Iridium Communications Inc

Good day and welcome to Iridium's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ken Levy Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Chloe. Good morning, and welcome to Iridium's third quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me on today's call are our CEO, Matt Desch, and our CFO, Vince O'Neill. Today's call will begin with a discussion of our third quarter results, followed by Q&A. I trust you've had the opportunity to review this morning's earnings release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of Iridium's website. Before I turn things over to Matt, I'd like to caution all participants that our call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1985. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical fact and include statements about our future expectations, plans, and prospects. Such forward-looking statements are based upon our current beliefs and expectations and are subject to risks which could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements. Such risks are more fully discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our remarks today should be considered in light of such risks. Any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today, and while we may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so, even if our views or expectations change. During the call, we'll also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including operational EBITDA, pro forma free cash flow, free cash flow yield, and free cash flow conversion. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Please refer to today's earnings release in the investor relations section of our website for further explanation of these non-GAAP financial measures and in reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Matt.

Good morning, everyone. We just finished another solid quarter, which puts us on track to meet our OEBITDA growth expectations for the year. I'd like to use my time today to share some broader thoughts about the satellite space and our plans to address and capitalize on the changing landscape. Vince will then recap Iridium's quarterly performance in greater detail and highlight the trends we have seen since our last earnings call. As you are well aware, the recent proposed acquisition of Echo Star Spectrum by Starlink to build a global D2D capability is a significant event for the satellite industry. We believe this acquisition will likely be disruptive to the status quo and will hasten the introduction of a global service that, over time, will connect new smartphones configured to use this spectrum. It could also accelerate the adoption of IoT devices that better compete with our global IoT services, at least better than the current D2D efforts using cellular spectrum on a regional basis in a few countries around the world. We acknowledge that more competition is coming to our corner of the satellite market. We take this increased competition seriously and believe that this development will affect us as early as the latter years of this decade and most certainly into the 2030s. Now, that being said, we do have exciting prospects as well as an enviable position in established growing markets because of the quality and durability of our partnerships and satellite solutions. We have tremendous experience developing thousands of Iridium-connected solutions that are already in the market. This knowledge and our knowledge and our network will serve us well in responding to the changes taking place in the industry today. To be clear, we will be proactive and pivot to strengthen our position amid ongoing changes to the satellite market landscape. We have a long history of doing this, and I'm confident we will be successful in continuing can continue to grow revenues as the market for satellite services evolves. Iridium has focused on providing unique, specialized services in the satellite industry. While we have some areas of overlap with other satellite providers, we have never sought to participate in price-driven commodity markets, and we don't plan to now. Our current development of Iridium NTN Direct is a great entry point into providing a new standards-based D2D service that will expose us to a new and potentially larger market opportunity. However, broadband D2D is still a nascent, unproven market, and absent a partner with Spectrum and Committed Capital to support this type of build-up, we have no plans to go it alone. As we think about our long-term future and think about the services we'd include in a follow-on constellation, We will look to opportunities that provide us with the greatest return on capital, and for now, 5G broadband doesn't fit that profile for us. Instead, we plan to build on our market strengths and focus even more deeply on the areas we are uniquely qualified to deliver. This includes continuing to prudently invest in new growth areas around our unique industrial-grade IoT and PNT services, and exploring acquisitions in adjacent areas that are complementary. We will focus on regulated applications where demand for safety services are growing, and our unique global satellite capability can provide a critical solution, such as maritime and aviation cockpit safety services. In addition, we believe Iridium has a strong and defensible position in the growing autonomous systems market as a fail-safe connection for drones, crewless vessels, and other autonomous vehicles. These vehicles will need multiple redundant connections for safety and reliability and will also appreciate our P&T technology to protect their location and navigation. As I said before, we will continue with our investment in Iridium NTN Direct. Our development work with standards-based IoT continues to provide an exciting opportunity and is complementary to other D2D efforts in the industry. We are making strong progress on this new service, and we're now in the process of on-air testing from live satellites. We're getting good traction from mobile network operators. You likely saw our announcements with Deutsche Telekom and Carrier One, and there are more announcements to come. We're finding demand from MNOs for a global Iridium service onto which their IoT customers can roam. And we believe Iridium NTN Direct will augment our already successful and growing IoT portfolio and expand our addressable market into the broader terrestrial IoT space. We will also seek to build or acquire intellectual property and assets that provide Iridium other outlets for growing new revenue streams that won't compete directly with these new D2D services coming in a few years. For example, Iridium has a very unique platform with our powerful new PNT service, which has the ability to reshape security applications and fortify terrestrial networks. We're seeing a lot of traction in a number of commercial and government industries that need an alternative to GPS for critical infrastructure, protection for their navigation systems, and accurate in-building time sources in addition to other security uses. We are also developing a unique quantum-safe cybersecurity product using our P&T signal that can improve identity access management and provide authentication for high-value transactions, tapping into the $20 billion identity verification industry and creating a new revenue stream. Even capturing a small portion of this growing market would be meaningful to a company of our size. We are also continuing our focus on U.S. national security missions, building on our collaboration with the U.S. government over the last 25 years. Iridium's network is relied upon for primary and backup communications, secure transmissions, specialized IoT services, tactical radios, and much more. Many government agencies depend on Iridium's service for critical data transfer, asset management, and situational awareness, to name a few. And, of course, our technology is embedded into so many applications and missions, so it is not easily replaced by other satellite systems or evolving D2D services. We continue to discuss our EMSS contract renewal with the U.S. government and expect a positive and productive outcome in the next year as the government continues to rely more heavily on commercial satellite services like ours. Similarly, Our contract with the Space Force's Space Development Agency is another important touchpoint with the U.S. government. We see the work we're doing on building the ground entry points and operation centers for SDA's new network as giving us great visibility into the government's Golden Dome initiative and credibility to support its future needs. We are well positioned to expand the scope of our work with the government going forward as they invest heavily in Golden Dome. These are just a few areas for which we believe disciplined capital deployment can provide continued strong revenue and bottom-line growth, and we look forward to being able to share additional details as we execute on our vision. Beyond our valuable global L-band satellite spectrum and the growing number of partners and solutions we've developed over our three decades of operations, Iridium is unique in the satellite industry in that we generate strong cash flows with reasonable capital cycles. With a healthy, flexible, and still young satellite constellation, we won't need to spend on a new network until well into the 2030s. With bus and launch costs significantly less than we experienced with our second-generation system, we feel good about our options for a lower-cost construction and launch when the time comes, including potentially as hosted payloads on another constellation system. Further, we have confidence that our strong cash flow should continue over the next five years and into the 2030s when a replacement system may be needed. Even with the increased uncertainty provided by a new satellite entrance, we still expect to generate at least $1.5 to $1.8 billion in total cash flows from 2026 through 2030, giving us a lot of flexibility as we enhance our business and focus on new growth opportunities. Given the increased focus on solidifying our competitive position, we have decided that we will pause our share repurchase program to emphasize strategic growth initiatives and continue our discipline in the deployment of capital as we remain committed to deleveraging the balance sheet. We believe this is a prudent course for now, even as we continue with our quarterly dividend program. As you can see by our earnings report today, we continue to grow revenue and subscribers. and we expect to grow well into the future. Since the beginning of the year, we've signed up more than 70 new technology and distribution partners to the Iridium ecosystem to either build new solutions or license our technology for new Iridium-based products. These are indicative of the continuing value of our network and demonstrate the strong pipeline we have for continued growth. We are confident that Irenium's many product lines will continue to be relevant, and we are excited to begin to invest in related technologies and businesses where we see meaningful growth potential. While the Echosar Spectrum sale is a major development, it does not come as a complete surprise to us. More D2D competition is coming, but we have time to respond as market reaction will be slow. We've seen this with a limited market reaction to Apple's D2D offerings, and the response to the new T-Mobile satellite services, which have been underwhelming as well. We agree that the communications market is changing and new industries, which hadn't previously seriously considered using satellite solutions, are now beginning to explore or build applications that offer real value to their customers. This is an attractive environment for us and we expect Iridium's opportunities will expand. As we invest in new technologies and adjust our market focus, we know that our competitive advantage comes from focusing on specialized products and services for which high reliability and customized solutions remain key points of differentiation. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Vince to discuss our quarterly results and outlook. Vince?