EchoStar Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the ECHO Star Corporation's Q2 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Dean Manson, Chief Legal Officer. Thank you, Dean. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to Echostar's second quarter 2024 earnings call. We will begin with opening remarks from Hamid Akhavan, President and CEO, followed by Paul Orban, EVP and Principal Financial Officer, Gary Shandman, EVP and Group President of Video Services, Paul Gasky, COO of Hughes, and John Swearinger, President of Technology, and COO. We request that any participant producing a report not identify other participants or their firm with such reports. We also do not allow audio recording, which we ask that you respect. All statements we make during this call, others 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 They could cause our actual results to be materially different from historical results and from any future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statement. For a list of those factors and risks, please refer to our quarterly report on Form 10Q for the quarter end of June 30, 2024, filed today, 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. in our reports and should not place any undue reliance on any forward-looking statement. We assume no responsibility for updating any forward-looking statements. We refer to OIBDA and free cash flow during this call. The comparable gap measure and a reconciliation for OIBDA is presented in our earnings release and, in the case of free cash flow, in our 10-Q. With that, I'll turn it over to Hamid.

Thank you, Dean. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Through the first six months of the year, Echostar has been performing as planned. We have focused on integrating operations, advancing our 2024 plans, driving better alignment within our business units, realizing synergies, and managing costs. Our prepared remarks for today's earnings call will focus on our operating business units in the pay TV, wireless, and broadband and satellite services segments. Many of you may also be interested in hearing about our efforts to refinance our maturing debt obligation due in November and to improve our liquidity, including addressing the going concern disclosure. On that front, we continue to make progress and are in constructive discussions with counterparties, which we feel best support our objectives. The nature of these discussions requires confidentiality. While I cannot provide more detail today, we will have more to share when it's appropriate. Our operating business continued to meet or exceed our budget targets in key metrics in the second quarter. We will elaborate upon this later on the call. As we stated on the last earnings call, our operating plan achieves positive operating free cash flow for the year as we continue to drive efficiencies, optimization, and synergies that increase our profitability. After the first six months, we remain on track for meeting this key objective for the year. In addition to our operational improvements, particularly in pay TV and broadband and satellite service business units, we continually refine and enhance our offerings for both consumer and enterprise customers. We remain committed to innovation with our state-of-the-art open RAN wireless network that now serves double the number of Boost Mobile customers since last quarter at over half a million. A network coupled with Boost Mobile's pivot to a unified digital experience gives us the runway to increase our share of the wireless market. In our broadband and satellite business, we continue to march forward with our enterprise offerings and expect enterprise revenues to surpass that of our consumer revenues this year. On another positive front, this morning we received approval on Liberty Puerto Rico transaction, so that transaction will close within the next 30 days or so. While there's still a lot of work ahead for the team, we are pleased with the performance from the first half of the year and will use this positive momentum throughout the second half of 2024. With that, I will turn it over to Paul Orban for additional commentary on our Q2 numbers.