EchoStar Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the EchoStar Corporation first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the presentation. You may submit. If you need to require operator assistance during the conference, you can press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Dean Manson, Chief Legal Officer. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Echostar's first quarter 2025 earnings call. We will begin with opening remarks from Hamid Akhavan, President and CEO, followed by Paul Orban, EVP and Principal Financial Officer, and John Swearinga, President of Technology and COO. We request that any participant producing a report not identify other participants or their firm in such reports. We also do not allow audio recording, which we ask that you respect. 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 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-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2025, filed today, May 9, and our subsequent filings made with the SEC. All cautionary statements we make during this 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. We refer to OIBDA and free cash flow during this call. The comparable gap measure and 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.

Hamid Al- Thank you, Dean. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We have updated our format for today's earnings call to include the use of a slideshow presentation. While this information has historically been included only in our course of refiling, we've opted to include this slide deck format as part of our prepared remarks. Last year, we set the foundation as a global provider of connectivity and entertainment solutions and services. We drove efficiencies across all our brands and invested in profitable growth. Our unique set of assets across satellite, video, wireless, and enterprise, along with our U.S.-based manufacturing, positioned us well for the remainder of 2025 and beyond. We built upon our strong foundation in the first quarter and saw improvements in many key metrics. I'll now comment on some details across our lines of business. Wireless's performance remained strong with 150,000 subscribers net ads in the first quarter as compared to an 81,000 net loss in the same period of 2024. Our consistent marketing efforts combined with the ongoing optimization and recognition of our network performance are key factors in this success. In the first quarter, we expanded the benefits of our prepaid and postpaid offerings to both our branded stores and digital sales channels and built upon gains in combining our services under the single Boost Mobile brand. We also increased our marketing spend and offers during the important tax return window which seasonally increases demand for new devices and upgrades. These activities helped anchor our first quarter subscriber growth and positioned us well for additional opportunities in 2025. As a testament to our excellent network experience and competitive mix of offers in the quarter, we increased our wireless subscribers to approximately 7.15 million while improving the quality of our subscriber base as evidenced by seven 0.2 percent improvement in churn year-over-year and an increase in ARPU. Overall, we are satisfied with what we have managed to achieve over the past year and will continue to focus on profitable subscriber additions. Furthermore, in light of recent economic uncertainty, we believe we have some of the most attractive offers in the market for consumers looking to capture the best value in the mobile business. In our huge business, we continue our progress in the enterprise domain. Our in-flight connectivity business recently announced universal compatibility of our terminals in the KA and KU bands. Dual compatibility means our airline customers are not limited to one constellation, enabling cost effectiveness, flexibility, and an optimal passenger experience. We also recently announced membership in the Airbus HBC Plus program, which gives us the ability to serve airlines with a line fit option at Airbus Factory. These developments, in addition to our expanded contracts for regional and wide-body aircraft with Delta Airlines, add to our in-flight product offerings and increase our backlog. In Q1, we began commercial shipment of a new single-panel version of our electronically suitable LEO antenna. This cost-effective, high-performance addition to the user terminal family is uniquely suited for global enterprise use due to its size, weight, and ease of installation. We have signed contracts from customers in Europe and India for our SD-WAN and AIOps capabilities. In Latin America, we finished deploying our multi-orbit managed network to support private networks and security services on LEO and GeoSatellites and secured additional demand for similar services for Brazilian national parks. Finally, our HughesNet consumer business, we closed Q1 with over 850,000 broadband subscribers. In Q1, the performance of our paid TV business, consisting of dish and slang, was in line with our expectations. Dish business and media sales performed well, and we delivered roughly 7% growth in OIbida per subscriber. Despite macro headwinds in the paid TV landscape, we remain focused on acquiring and retaining the most profitable subscribers that value our service offerings. Our video segment remained focused on operational efficiency, customer loyalty, and improving user experiences. These efforts helped increase ARPU and reduce non-programming valuable cost per subscriber. This work will serve us well in the remainder of 2025 as we introduce new offerings to meet evolving consumer demands and expand our cross-sell opportunities with Boost Mobile. DISH TV finished the quarter with approximately 5.5 million subscribers. and churn was 1.36% compared to 1.53%, a reduction of 11% for the same period of 2024. Our lower year-over-year churn is a result of our data-driven loyalty initiatives and bundled offers. DHTB churn is now at the lowest level in over a decade, excluding the pandemic. We also drove pay TVR growth with a year-over-year increase of over $3, or 3%, due to the full effect of 2024 price increases. Also, in spite of competitive headwinds in the streaming market, we closed the first quarter with 1.9 million Sling subscribers. Now, I would like to turn it over to Paul Orban for commentary and color on the numbers.