Telesat Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the conference call to report the third quarter 2021 financial results for Telesat. Our speakers today will be Dan Goldberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Telesat, and Andrew Brown, Chief Financial Officer of Telesat. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Michael Belaito, Director of Treasury and Risk Management. Please go ahead, Mr. Belaito.

Thank you, and good morning. Earlier today, we issued a news release containing Telesat's consolidated financial results for the three- and nine-month periods ended September 30, 2021. This news release is available on Telesat's website at www.telesat.com under the tab Investors. We also filed our quarterly report on Form 6-K with the SEC this morning. Our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements. There are risks that tell us that actual results may differ materially from the results contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of known and unknown risks and uncertainties. For additional information about known risks, we refer you to the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 20-S for the 2020 fiscal year and in our quarterly reports on Form 6-K, all of which can be obtained on the SEC website. The information that we are discussing today reflects our expectations as of today and is subject to change. Except as required by securities laws, Telesat disclaims any obligation or undertaking to update or revise this information, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I will now turn the call over to Dan Goldberg, Telesat's President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Michael. This morning, I'll discuss our third quarter and first nine months results and give an update on the business. I'll then hand over to Andrew, who will speak to the numbers in more detail, and then we'll open the call up to questions. Comparing our Q3 results for the same period last year and adjusting for foreign exchange rate changes, revenue was down 2%, adjusted EBITDA was down 1%, and our adjusted EBITDA margin was 81.5%, up slightly from 80.4% in the prior period. Comparing the nine-month results and adjusting for FX, Revenue was down 4%, adjusted EBITDA was down 3%, and our adjusted EBITDA margin was 80.2%, slightly higher than the 79.7% in the prior period. The FX adjusted reduction in revenue and adjusted EBITDA for both the quarter and the first nine months of the year was primarily driven by a slight reduction of service for one of Telesat's North American DTH customers. the reduction or non-renewal of certain services in the enterprise segment, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and lower consulting revenue, partially offset by an increase in revenue associated with short-term services provided to another satellite operator. Turning to some key metrics, backlog at the end of the quarter, which I should note excludes backlog associated with our telesat lightspeed constellation, was $2.3 billion, and our fleet utilization was 80%. Looking at how our revenues broke down on an application basis for the quarter, broadcast was 51% of total revenue, enterprise services 47%, and consulting another 2%. And on a geographic basis for the quarter, North America accounted for 81% of revenue, EMEA was 8%, Latin America was 7%, and Asia was 4%. As discussed on our last call, in the third quarter, we announced that the government of Canada is making a $1.44 billion investment in the Tarasat Lightspeed LEO constellation and announced also that the government of Ontario is committing $109 million to use Lightspeed to provide high-capacity broadband connectivity to remote communities throughout the province. As we noted in our 6K for the quarter, Thales Alenia Space, who we've been working with on Lightspeed, recently informed us that the global supply chain issues out there will delay the construction of the Lightspeed satellites, which in turn will delay our getting into commercial service. We're working with Thales now to get a better sense of the magnitude of the delay, whether there are steps we can take to mitigate the delays and whether there are any further optimization we should consider for the Lightspeed design if we have a little more time. This delay with TALOS is also delaying our ability to complete our financing arrangements with the export credit agencies. I expect we'll have more clarity on the Lightspeed schedule and export credit agency discussions in the near term. Lastly, on the roll-up transaction with Loral, I'm pleased to say that we're on track for that transaction to close and for Telesat to become a public company before the end of the year. And with that, I'll hand over to Andrew.