Telesat Corporation

This conference is being recorded. All participants, please stand by. Your conference is ready to begin. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the conference call to report the third quarter 2023 financial results for TELESEP. Our speakers today will be Dan Goldberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of TELESEP, and Andrew Brown, Chief Financial Officer of TELESEP. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Michael Bolaito, Director of Treasury and Risk Management. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and good morning. This morning, we filed our quarterly report on Form 6K with the SEC and on CDAR. 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 a discussion of known risks, see Telesat's annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Telesat assumes no responsibility to update or revise these forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Dan Goldberg, Telesat's president and chief executive officer.

Okay, thank you, Michael. This morning, I'll share some thoughts on our financial results and give an update on the business. I'll then hand over to Andrew. We'll speak to the numbers in detail, and then we'll open the call up to questions. We've been executing well so far this year and are on track with the key financial, strategic, and operational objectives we've been focused on. We're tracking our guidance, received the final roughly U.S. $260 million of U.S. CBAN clearing proceeds, and completed some meaningful additional debt repurchases in the quarter that we think will strengthen our financial position and create value for shareholders. Obviously, a huge focus for us is executing on Telesat Lightspeed, our advanced broadband LEO network, and I'll give some updates on that. Since sharing on our Q2 call that we selected MDA as our prime contractor and are fully funded for the program, we've done a significant amount of work with MDA to advance the program, including further engagement with the supply chain. Both Telesat and MDA are ramping up their teams to execute Lightspeed, And I've been really pleased, though not surprised, by the extraordinarily capable people we're bringing on board and the really strong interest we're seeing from professionals throughout the industry to join us to work on this flagship program. We also announced in the quarter another key Lightspeed contract, this one with SpaceX for 14 Falcon 9 rockets to launch the advanced satellites making up the Lightspeed network. I believe it's SpaceX's largest commercial launch contract. Falcon 9 is the most reliable rocket out there, and SpaceX has a demonstrated high launch cadence that will go a long way toward ensuring that we bring Lightspeed to market consistent with our schedule. They've been a great partner for Telesat on a number of our prior programs, and we're very pleased to be working with them on Lightspeed. Our other key focus is concluding our funding arrangements with our Canadian, federal, and provincial partners. We're fully engaged with them at this time and remain optimistic that we'll be able to reach financial close consistent with the timeframe we shared previously, which is to say later this year or early next year. The Telesat Lightspeed program advances a wide range of important public policy goals, including bridging the digital divide, spurring advanced manufacturing, IP development, exports, and high-quality jobs, as well as important climate and national security objectives. Our federal and provincial partners in Canada have been strong and consistent supporters of the Lightspeed program and we're grateful for that. We remain hugely bullish about Telesat Lightspeed and are looking forward to sharing more detailed information with investors about our business plan and expectations. To that end, Andrew and I plan to get on the road to meet with investors in both the US and Canada over the next couple of weeks. We're looking forward to it. With that, I'll hand over to Andrew and then look forward to addressing any questions you may have.