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spk02: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to X-Star Corporation conference call for first quarter 2022 results. At this time, all attendees are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. And to ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. Thank you. Now I would like to welcome Mr. Terry Brown. Sir, please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our earnings call for the first quarter of 2022. I'm joined today by Hamid Akhavan, our CEO and President, David Raynor, COO and CFO, Pradman Kaul, President of Hughes, Dean Manson, General Counsel and Secretary, and Ken Carroll, EVP of Corporate Development. As usual, we invite media to participate in a listen-only mode on the call and ask that you not identify participants or their firms in your report. We also do not allow audio recording, which we ask that you respect. Let me now turn the call over to Dean for the Safe Harbor disclosure. Thank you, Terry.
spk09: All statements we make during this call, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause our actual results to be materially different from historical results and from any future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. For a list of those factors and risks, please refer to our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, filed on February 23rd, and our subsequent filings made with the SEC. All cautionary statements we make during the call should be understood as being applicable to any forward-looking statements we make, wherever they appear. You should carefully consider the risks described in our reports and should not place any undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. We assume no responsibility for updating any forward-looking statements. I'll now turn the call over to Hamid.
spk05: Thank you, Dean, and good day, everyone. I am pleased to participate in my first Echostar earnings call, and I look forward to interacting with many of you in the future. As some of you are aware, Anders Johnson, our Chief Strategy Officer and President of Echostar Satellite Services, has decided to leave Echostar to pursue other interests. We wish Anders great success in his new endeavors and would like to thank him for his tremendous contributions to our company over the past 11 years. Our agenda for the call today is to have our team provide a brief overview of the first quarter. Following the overview, I will make some general comments on the business and competitive environment. We'll then move to a question and answer session. Let me now turn it over to Prat.
spk04: Thank you, Amin. Starting with North America, we continue to manage our U.S. consumer broadband sales and marketing efforts to optimize service to the existing subscriber base. The Hughes team has several initiatives underway to help maximize returns in the U.S. consumer segment. In Q1, we adjusted the HughesNet service plans, giving customers more data and increasing monthly fees. The new plans are being implemented across the U.S. base and are intended to provide a better customer experience and higher ARPU. Another initiative in the consumer sector is an innovative product which combines geosatellite and terrestrial LTE connectivity. This is a first-of-its-kind consumer-grade hybrid geo and LTE technology that creates a faster, more responsive Internet experience. Clients are well underway to bring this technology to select markets this summer. Our North American Enterprise Group signed a significant contract with a new retail customer to provide secure SD-WAN services at their 700 locations. We also closed upgrades and extensions with several customers in the pipeline industry. Our defense business received new orders from the U.S. Space Force and Navy. And in the civilian government sector, we received an award from the Department of Veteran Affairs to continue to provide satellite services in support of its VA knowledge network. and an extension for the digital signage solution for the Social Security Administration's 1,900 offices. Activity at OneWeb remains robust, and the team continues a very active deployment pace for the global gateways to support OneWeb's global service launch. We announced another distribution agreement with OneWeb this time to deliver LEO services to the U.S. DoD. In another exciting development, the Satellite and the Satellite 2022 trade show in March, our engineers demonstrated a revolutionary new electronically steered antenna for one web service. Focused on the government and enterprise market, the sleek new ESA has no moving parts and a very low profile, ideal for fixed and mobile connectivity. Let's talk a little bit about our international operations. The HughesNet offering in Latin America, like that in the U.S., continues to be capacity constrained in certain areas, while usage remains high. These markets are also being impacted by adverse economic conditions. In response, the team has adapted our strategy to pursue more high-value enterprise and government projects and community Wi-Fi sites. An example, during this quarter, the team won two new school projects in Latin America using Jupiter system equipment and capacity. Five service providers in Mexico selected Jupiter equipment to connect more than 7,000 internet access and community Wi-Fi hotspots. We also cross-crossed more than 2,300 active Hughes Express Wi-Fi sites. And we announced a successful pilot of a community LTE project in Brazil, which uses geosatellite backhaul to connect an LTE tower to the internet. All of these projects represent tangible progress on our plans to increase our yield on our Latin American capacity. The Jupiter 3 satellite continues to progress at Maxar. Maxar has provided an updated schedule and we now expect to launch Jupiter 3 in the first quarter of 2023. This delay is due in part to reallocation of critical resources at Maxar to a higher priority government related spacecraft project. Although we're disappointed with this delay, we remain highly excited about Jupiter 3 as it will bring significant additional capacity to our markets, as well as the ability to offer high-speed service plans as demanded by our customers. Overall, I was very pleased with the execution during the quarter.
spk01: Let me now turn the call over to Dave. Thank you, Bradman. Good morning, everyone. Our revenue in the first quarter of 2022 remained strong and was higher compared to the same period last year and also higher compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. While the growth of our consumer broadband business has been impacted as a result of our capacity constraints and other factors, we have continued to increase revenue by capitalizing on enterprise and government opportunities, both domestically and internationally. However, this change in our revenue mix has and will continue to put some pressure on our margins. As Pradman mentioned, we have several initiatives in place to limit the impact of this change, and we will remain prudent in the efficient management of our business, protect our margins until we can monetize the additional capacity provided by the Jupiter 3 satellite. Free cash flow defined as adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx was $54 million during the quarter. increasing $47 million from the same period last year. Our balance sheet remains one of the strongest in the industry, and we continue to seek opportunities to deploy cash for growth. In the first quarter of 2022, we bought back 1.5 million shares of our stock in the open market at a cost of $35 million. Let me now turn the call back over to Hamid.
spk05: Thank you, Dave. I want to begin by thanking my leadership team here at EchoStar and all of our more than 2,000 employees around the world, not just for a warm welcome to me as a newcomer, but for maintaining a solid track record of performance as evidenced by today's results. As we all know, the satellite industry, and I would venture to say the broader telecom industry, where I have spent a great portion of my business life, is in the midst of its most rapid business and technological change in decades. You've seen the rise of competition as well as opportunities in every vertical market and in every region of the globe where EchoStar operates or serves customers. I'm excited about the dynamic nature of our industry as I view our position to be on the winning side of the equations given our strong resources, institutional heritage, and financial flexibility. I know that there are questions about our long-term growth strategy, which I'm not prepared to address today, but I would like to mention that my leadership team and I are in the midst of a fresh reassessment of our resources and opportunities and an examination of our industry and adjacent verticals with the goal to reignite and refine our corporate growth profile. But even based on a preliminary view of the situation, having been in my role just about a month today, I will assert that we are well positioned competitively. I say this for many reasons. First, we have a uniquely strong balance sheet, something that most of our peers and competitors cannot say. I think the benefit of this strong balance sheet becomes more evident as interest rates rise and as the likelihood of a recessionary environment becomes meaningful secondly we have a global presence and trusted reputation worldwide industry partners and customers want to work with our team government and enterprises alike would prefer working with a trusted partner during uncertain geopolitical developments as we are experiencing today Third, we have a tremendous and I would say unmatched asset in our engineering capabilities. And finally, we have unique S-band spectrum assets that provide strategic opportunities. I'm excited about accelerating our momentum in that domain, and I want to share a couple of high-level updates on initiatives we are focused on. For one, we are pleased that last month, the wireless industry's main standard-setting association, the Third Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP, reached completion of its Release 17. Release 17 is the first to include non-terrestrial networks, or NTN, and to address satellite's role in the 5G global communication ecosystem. Satellite 5G specifications include direct access to handheld devices, enabling global service coverage. Because of its expanded spectrum assets, which are standardized in 3GPP, ECOSTAR is positioned to become a leading global operator of 5G mobile satellite services, addressing direct-to-device mobility and IoT applications. The other update is that EchoStar Mobile, our EU licensee, has begun pre-commercial testing of its satellite-based LoRa IoT service. EchoStar Mobile's solution is the first real-time bidirectional LoRa satellite service with mobile and remote capabilities, and we expect it to transform the global satellite IoT market with new, very low-cost services and enhanced LPWAN capabilities. Among the many countering challenges and opportunities shaping this industry, we can be happy about one key fact. We are one of the few companies with significant ability to chart our future independent of what other players in our industry may choose to do. I believe any solid and defensible growth strategy requires careful thinking, analysis, and planning to be sure the long-term risk-reward equation is asymmetrically favorable And while we will take investment leaps both organically and via acquisitions, the core business, the financial stability, and independence will never be jeopardized. I hope to participate in investor events post our second quarter of 22 earnings call and to share more about the specifics of our strategic direction over the coming quarters. Let me now turn it over to the operator to start the Q&A session.
spk02: As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question is from the line of Chris Guilty from Guilty Analytics. Your line is now open.
spk08: Hi, Hamid, and welcome aboard. A question to start on the Hughes business and specifically around some of the new pricing initiatives. When was that implemented, and does it still leave your general pricing strategy in alignment with other competitors in the market, or are you now pricing it more of a premium?
spk04: Well, we implemented it, I think, beginning in February of this year, and so we're beginning to see the impact. Some of the Q1 results clearly showed the higher ARPU impact of this price increase. So that's going well. In terms of competitiveness, it's fairly in the same range as our primary competitor and obviously a lot lower than the Linkstar offerings that are in the market today.
spk08: I understand. And I know that, you know, whatever we have about a year for the satellite to come online, But how do you, how and when do you begin to change the pricing plans to reflect, you know, the different types of service packages that will be offered with the Jupiter 3 satellites?
spk04: It's a little premature to talk about the plans that we will have with Jupiter 3, but clearly we intend to give more bits to the customer. We intend to give higher speeds to the customer. And I think with the additional value that the customer gets, it should position us very strongly to be competitive in that market.
spk08: Great. Just overall on the Hughes business, You've had some really strong equipment sales. I assume the majority of that year-over-year left is due to OneWeb gateways. How should we look at the equipment revenue out through the balance of the year? Is that activity starting to fall off?
spk04: No, in fact, it's getting stronger. Our new order input during Q1 was very good. So our backlog in that equipment business is high. So I would expect that's going to be a strong part of our performance during the rest of this year.
spk08: Great. And you didn't talk about the, well, I guess it's Hughes Communications India, if I got the name right, the new Bahardi JV. What is the plan there going forward now that that's official and final? Are there any major changes in strategy that you've?
spk04: Yeah, that's an exciting part, I think, of our international business. As you know, we own 65% of that joint venture in Bharti. Airtel owns the remaining 35%. And we've already started working together to come up with strategies to provide things like backhaul, cellular backhaul. Bhatia, as you know, is one of the two leading cellular service providers in India with over 400 million subscribers. So we expect that as 4g and 5g gets implemented in india bharti is going to have a lot of requirements for sending it back on to connect the new base stations with each other and that business for well most of it should come to this jv and we expect that to be a major part of our growth uh in india over the next few years we also continue to supply uh equipment to Relance Geo, which is the other major cellular company in India. And we hope to continue to grow that element of our business too.
spk07: And are there any near-term capacity concerns in the Indian market?
spk04: No, I don't think so. I don't think we have any concerns right now. I think that the general tenor of the market in India, which was being run, unfortunately, which was highly regulated, has started changing. There's been major changes that the government has announced where they will create an organization very similar to the FCC called Engine Space in SPAC, And I think that will loosen up the regulatory issues a little bit. It's not going to solve it all instantly, but I expect that there will be some nice advances in business in that area.
spk08: Got it. And final question on the ESA or flat panel antenna you announced. Can you give us a little bit of history there on the design of that product? I know in the past you had partnered with Gilad and others on flat panels. What was the size, scale, scope, expense of that project? And second question is, where do you expect it to be positioned in terms of price competitiveness with other antennas on the market? And is this solely intended for for OneWeb, or would you be willing to sell that to other parties?
spk04: No, we certainly would sell it to anybody in the market. There's no exclusivity in our agreement with OneWeb. OneWeb is obviously going to be, because they have a KU band, they are a major customer and also a major user of the CSA. The original effort that we had done with Gillard didn't really succeed very much, so we have not pursued that anymore. This ESA is totally developed at Hughes. All the elements are being manufactured initially at our Hughes factories. and we're very excited and our potential customers are very excited too because it's a revolutionary new technology no moving parts very low profile making it ideal for mobility and aeronautical applications so that brings up a question if you designed it to the sort of aviation standards then this is clearly not intended
spk08: to be a product that could in any way serve the consumer markets and the consumer price points?
spk04: Yeah, no, it's clearly, you're absolutely right. It's clearly designed for the mobility markets, aeronautical being a big element of it, and high-end government markets, and also the enterprise, high-end enterprise markets.
spk08: Very good. Thank you, everybody.
spk02: Your next question is from the line of Rick Prentice from Raymond James. Your line is now open.
spk08: Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. I want to ask a couple of questions. Sorry, busy earnings day, back-to-back-to-back-to-back earnings calls. I wanted to ask Hamid a couple of questions. First, and I apologize if this was asked or addressed, what specifically attracted you to the opportunity at EchoStar as far as what you see in your first 30 days, what have you learned so far about where some of the growth factors might be?
spk05: Thank you, Rick, for the question. There were many factors that attracted me to EchoStar and Hughes Family. First, I was familiar with part of the company. I had been a customer of Hughes some 25 years ago. I was part of a very high-profile company, and Hughes was a technology and product supplier, and I was incredibly impressed by the capabilities of the company in terms of innovation, bringing solid technology. I mean, technology is at the heart, innovation at the heart, and I believe one of the best opportunities in today's market and going forward is is to bring disruptive technologies and great technical services to market. And I think the foundation here is extremely solid, and I was familiar with it, and in fact familiar with many of the players, including Fatman here sitting next to me. Other than that, I came from a private equity background, at least for the past five or six years of my life. I've been very, very actively involved in technology investments and TMT investments. When I look at the balance sheet here, I recognize that there's a significant opportunity for exposing value in the business that has been undervalued. Now, I don't want to set a high expectation that you will see something happen in a rash. I was never and I will never be a rash investor. I will never be a speculative investor. I like to use our best understanding of the environment, the dynamics of the market, which we have been serving for decades. to use our balance sheet, but we will be more active in terms of using our cash and our abilities to expand our business using our resources. And as I mentioned in my earlier comments, I think the market is heading in a direction where opportunities will be cheaper and better to acquire, and I look forward to using our resources even more optimally as that happens. Long answer to your short question, but I thought that that probably will cover three or four questions, follow-on questions, Rick.
spk08: Exactly. Kind of open the door to potential acquisitions. What is it that Hughes slash Echostar really needs? Is it new equipment? Is it new customer bases? Is it new technologies? Just kind of as you think of kind of a SWOT analysis, what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that you look at and that you see having a battleship balance sheet to put to work that might be on a very high level something of interest?
spk05: So certainly it's not technology. I think we have plenty of technology in-home. I'm not expecting or looking. It might happen in adjacencies, but in terms of how much technical power we have in-house, I think we have plenty to harvest, so that's probably not a shortfall in any way. If there are areas where we should be focusing on is how do we take these technologies into market, new markets, adjacent markets, how can we gain a scale where perhaps organically It might take too long. You know, it can be accelerated in some of the areas where we have capabilities, you know, through acquisitions. So those are, you know, routes to market and products to market to me would be the focus area rather than, you know, innovating new technology, which we have plenty of in-house and we can do, I guess, at will. It's not an inhibitor of our growth. Okay.
spk08: Another one for me is a lot of times when new executives come into a company, their compensation package talks a lot about what the important metrics are. Can you share with us a little bit about if you've got some accomplishment goals that are tied to, say, revenues or EBITDA or free cash flow or return on capital? Where is your incentive at and what metrics are you going to be looking at from a personal selfish standpoint of, hey, I want to make sure we do well here because it will – It will serve me well and hopefully serve the shareholders well as well.
spk05: Right. So I would say, I mean, at the moment, obviously, the compensation packages are what they have been and published, and there's no plan to change that in the course of this year for sure. But I think what might – the way I think about this as being most effective is we are in the middle of, you know, our strategic evaluations and thinking, and it's going to take us a few months to – you know, get to a platform where we feel it's, you know, fair space, let's call it. And that will be the foundation for our compensation plans for the following year. You know, so I think we're just in time in terms of doing that work in preparation for, you know, incentive systems that would, you know, promote progress in the directions we want to go. So this is probably a good discussion to have towards the end of the year where we are a little bit more I guess, orchestrated and organized around our strategic directions. Now, I don't want to say that we don't have a strategic direction. We certainly will utilize what we have, and there's great, great plans around Jupiter 3. There are great plans around expansion of our you know, products that you heard Pradman offer towards OneWeb and towards other government sectors. And so, you know, there is a significant amount of strategic work that has been done and we are executing on. So the job is to accelerate that. I think we could do this in hopefully on our, you know, S-band, you know area and and certainly um in in the directions that we have seen progress already you just want to double down so this would be more of an acceleration rather than you know complete back to a um you know blank sheet of paper which certainly is not necessary here great thanks um i'll let some others ask some questions and come back in the first time thank you welcome to the space thank you your next question is from the line of Caleb Henry from
spk02: Quilty Analytics, your line is now open.
spk06: Hey, everyone. Just two or three questions from me. The first is on the flat panel antenna that was discussed earlier. Is that already something that EchoStar is selling and shipping, or is that still in development? And if so, when is its release date?
spk04: It's still in development. We've built a prototype and done some prototype demonstrations with the first few units. We should be in production early next year.
spk06: Okay. And what's your target price range for that?
spk04: I don't think we're discussing our price strategy at this stage. We'll obviously see what the market... is like for the different applications so I don't think we're ready yet but what I can tell you though is if you just look at the bill of materials it should be very competitive with other units that we've seen in the market so far okay
spk06: Brad, while I have you, is there any plan to procure? I know in the past, Echostar has leased capacity from other operators when capacity constrained. Do you anticipate any more capacity leases between now and Jupiter 3?
spk04: You know, we're constantly looking at that, and people who have excess capacity, especially over in North America, you know, are talking to us about, Unfortunately, we haven't yet seen an economically compelling deal from any of those guys. But if we can come up with one, I'm sure we would evaluate that because it can only help our business. But the economics are tough, and it has to make sense economically.
spk06: Okay. And then my last question is, Regarding S-band and some of the progress for 3GPP, I'm just wondering if that gives any clarity to Echo Star regarding your LEO constellation. I think there's the one IoT CubeSat in orbit. Have any of the plans been fleshed out for what that future system will look like?
spk05: It's a bit too early for us to answer that, but I can certainly say that... you know, the developments on 3GPP and the 5G inclusion for satellites in that standard opens up, you know, clearly a few angles and routes to monetizing our spectrum assets, which we are deeply analyzing and looking at. Certainly this was not a news to us that, you know, happened yesterday. We've been part of that activity ourselves and have been very supportive of that, you know, with the view that it would be helpful in terms of bringing, you know, satellite connectivity to pockets, which is, you know, they're already there. So we're excited about it. You know, there's still quite a bit of work to be done, not just by us, but also the rest of the industry trying to figure out you know, the technology, you know, build and commercialization of that. But from a framework of the opportunity, I think the clarity is there. And we understand that this will happen. And in one form or fashion, we will participate in that. And the question is exactly what. And, you know, please allow us, you know, a quarter or so to maybe two for us to kind of shape that and share that with you in more detail.
spk06: Okay, that's all my questions. Thank you, guys, and welcome to the industry, Hamid. Thank you.
spk02: Your next question is from the line of Nadine Saccetti from Paparus Capital. Your line is now open.
spk03: Hi, guys. Hope you're doing well. Just quickly, could you maybe give us a sense of, given the delays in Jupiter 3, maybe the cadence of of CapEx over the next year? And then maybe just talk through, just given where the stock is, just talk through some of what you mentioned earlier, Hamid, on kind of new capital projects and sort of what the hurdle is there versus continuing to sort of aggressively buy back stock. And then the second question is really I know we've talked about this in the past, but anything you can tell us around Jupiter 3 and sort of enterprise or wholesale opportunities, whether it's mobile backhaul or anything else that could sort of come on quickly versus just a ramping of consumer subscribers?
spk01: Let me address the first part of that. This is Dave Rayner. From a CapEx standpoint, I would expect CapEx to be somewhat below where we were in 2021, so probably in the $400 million range. A significant portion of that is continuing to go into CPE for consumers, and that will, on a per-customer basis, will probably start ticking up in the second half of the year as we start deploying a new generation of modem in anticipation of J-3. But we also, as you correctly point out, will have final payments on J-3 as well as launch and other ground infrastructure that will be completed this year. I'll let Hamid and Pradman address the rest of the question.
spk05: If you can comment on the hurdle rate. In terms of an investment hurdle rate, I'm not anticipating that we would have a very specific target because part of that is a function of the market. But I did mention earlier that I believe we might do even better in terms of our opportunities in a market, in a more down market or recessionary market. I'm not looking forward to that from a personal perspective, and I hope that from economic growth perspective of the market. I hope that is not a long-lasting something, you know, anything. But if it turns out that the market is heading towards softening, and we have seen the tech sector and the adjacent sectors to us are becoming a little cheaper. You have seen the, you know, valuations come down to more, you know, historical levels as opposed to just recent times that have been a bit overinflated. So I think that the market is heading our way. Let's put it that way. But, you know, will we, you know, trade, you know, buying our own shares versus the, you know, acquisitions? Well, certainly our desire is that we shift it toward, you know, acquisitions from outside and, and growth of existing customer base, but we always have the option of coming back and making sure that we're picking up our own shares if we think they're significantly undervalued. You will see us hopefully more active. Again, I don't want to set an expectation that after 90 days of me being in a job, the market has changed so much or I changed the company so much that that would be a little too exuberant and too rash. But you can certainly accept that the focus is very high on making sure we utilize our resources most efficiently.
spk04: Was there another piece of this question, if you don't mind repeating that, please?
spk03: Oh, yeah, of course. It's just around enterprise opportunities or wholesale opportunities for Jupiter 3.0. you know, early on since we're only, you know, now a year away versus sort of the consumer ramp that we saw, consumer subscriber ramp we saw with Jupyter 1 and 2?
spk04: Yeah, sure. I think clearly the two major new applications we see in the enterprise sector is selling a backhaul and the community Wi-Fi. Both of them use the fact that we can uh increase the productivity use of our bandwidth and get a higher uh you know price for every hertz of bandwidth that we have in these two satellites so that's the probably the primary difference uh we'll obviously continue to serve the enterprise market and continue to serve the um defense markets and then add on these two other markets to it.
spk03: Okay, thank you.
spk02: Appreciate it. Your next question is from the line of Rick Prentice from Raymond James. Your line is now open.
spk08: Yeah, hey, thanks. Appreciate some follow-ups. I want to ask, obviously, Anders has announced that he's retiring or he's resigning effective in about four weeks or so from now. Can you walk us through a little bit about how you see that playing out in the ESS and the S-band work? How deep is the bench, and what does it mean as far as our thoughts on what Anders Levy means to that segment and the potential growth?
spk05: Right. Well, first of all, I want to thank Anders for his great contributions to the company the past 11 years. He leaves a great legacy here. And he also leaves a great, great team behind. We have a very deep bench in-house in that area. And I personally have interest in... you know, being involved in every aspect of, you know, developing that practice. I do have, as I mentioned, some technical background myself. I started my career as a telemetry engineer in S-PAN for a NASA satellite. And so the love of S-PAN has always been in my heart. And so I guess a long way of saying I don't think you should see us as having lost or losing critical resources. Anders was incredible in terms of his leadership, but we will rally around our team here, and I'll contribute my own personal attention to it to make sure that nothing gets reduced there. If anything, we are shifting more resources there in order to make sure we are keeping up with the opportunity that is every day getting better in that space. So please don't read anything to it in terms of, you know, negative aspects other than, you know, we have a very good team and, you know, that team is interfacing with me directly at the top level of the business.
spk08: We saw some press releases fairly recently about DISH, sister company DISH, and Echo Star Hughes working on a Department of Defense contract jointly. Can you share with us a little bit of details of what kind of partnerships are of interest between the sisters of DISH and EchoStar slash Hughes that might pan out over the coming next few years?
spk04: Yeah, clearly this is a very exciting part of new opportunities in our business, and we are working with Hughes being prime, EchoStar Hughes being prime, and Dish being the subcontractor along with other people. It's a naval base where we're providing a 5G network at the base. And it's going to be interesting to see how that element of our business grows because it's a new area for us to enter. So the work has just started, and hopefully we'll try to take it to the next step over the next few months.
spk08: Speaking of DISH, many of us will be attending their first analyst investor day in, gosh, almost 20 years since a major analyst day at DISH. And certainly one of the investor thoughts on both DISH and Echostar is not much communication with the street. Hamid, as you come in, hopefully we're looking forward to a lot more communication as you get longer in the seat there. But how do you think about communicating in the street? I'll throw one more out there as well. As an under-followed stock, there's a lot of gaps in knowledge. Any thoughts about even high-level guidance targets or growth targets? I was on two other earnings calls this morning where companies were updating their guidance or talking about their guidance targets. any philosophical problems with providing at least aspirational targets or kind of longer-term targets, because as an under-followed stock, it certainly causes people to have a lot more concern or questions.
spk05: I appreciate your question, but it would be imprudent, and you should not rely on it if I gave you any guidance after 30 days in a job. If I give it to you.
spk08: Is it something you consider doing?
spk05: Yeah. Certainly if I say anything right now would be not, not have a solid foundation and you would not trust it anyway. Let me, please allow me to have, you know, a bit more understanding of the business. Look, I can, I will obviously never make a comment on dish regardless. So that's, that's a different public company that, we have an arm's length relationship with. I think we do have, you know, connection at the chairman level, but honestly, that's just about it. The rest of it is, you know, business as we would do with any other company. I like DISH from a perspective that, you know, they're doing innovative things in their space. They're building new things and, you know, they're bringing new technologies to market. Some of those things are hopefully relevant even for us, like some of the open RAN and you know, some of the things they're doing, which ultimately on a 3GP basis and deployment basis is also applicable to our business here at EchoStar. So I think we see a lot of synergies in terms of, you know, their innovation and what they're bringing to market and what we hope to bring to market. I think that's just about it. And I certainly cannot give you any guidance or change any guidance today, but let's revisit this question again in a quarter or two where I am more comfortable sharing.
spk08: Sure, it makes sense. And I guess the other piece of that question was just related to DISH is finally opening the kimono and sharing with Analyst Day, Investor Day, what kind of their plans are and what their vision is. As you look at Jupiter 3 on the schedule now for first quarter 23, the S-band hopefully getting more clarity on that. Do you see in the future a possibility of Echo Star maybe even hosting an analyst day to kind of get people up to speed on what Jupiter 3 is and what S-band really are just to kind of help people kick the tires and understand where you're headed? Again, not in the next day or two or even maybe the next quarter or two, but is it something philosophically that would be interesting?
spk05: Certainly, one of the things we like to do, I like to do, is to have more interaction with the market. I think one of the things that we can benefit from is being more interactive with you, being more communicative. I believe we have, if you just look at our balance sheet, if you look at the structure of our company, I think we have more valuable information and assets and products to expose to you. So it is my intent that we increase our interaction with you. But as I mentioned in my earlier standard comment, was that, you know, I need a quarter of two for us to be sure that when we take your time and we share something with you, it's valuable and you can rely on it. But we are heading in the direction of being more communicative and more interactive with you and more open with respect to our opportunities.
spk08: Great. Appreciate it. And I'll see if there's some more questions. Thanks, guys. Stay well.
spk02: There are no further questions. Presenters, please continue.
spk00: Okay. I think we want to thank everybody for joining the call today. And with that, we want to go ahead and conclude the meeting. So we'll look forward to talking to you next quarter.
spk05: Thank you, everyone. See you soon.
spk02: And with that, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending Emanuel Disconnect.
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