Iridium Communications beats by $0.03, beats on revs; affirms outlook (10.90)
- Reports Q3 (Sep) earnings of $0.23 per share, $0.03 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.20; revenues rose 3.3% year/year to $116.55 mln vs the $113.96 mln Capital IQ Consensus.
- The Company ended the quarter with 949,000 total billable subscribers, which compares to 838,000 for the year-ago period and is up from 912,000 for the quarter ended June 30, 2017. Total billable subscribers grew 13% year-over-year, driven by growth in commercial M2M and government customers.
- The Company affirmed its full-year 2017 outlook for total service revenue growth and updated its outlook for OEBITDA. The Company expects:
- Total service revenue growth between 3% and 5% for the full-year 2017.
- Full-year 2017 OEBITDA between $260 million and $265 million. OEBITDA for 2016 was $254.2 million.
- The Company also affirmed its long-range outlook for total service revenue growth, OEBITDA margin, cash taxes, peak net leverage and 2019 net leverage. Based on the expected 2018 Iridium NEXT system completion, the Company continues to expect:
- Total service revenue between $440 million and $465 million for the full-year 2019.
- OEBITDA margin of approximately 60% in 2019.
- Negligible cash taxes from 2017 to approximately 2020.
- Peak net leverage of 6.0x to 6.5x OEBITDA in 2017.
- Net leverage of approximately 4.5x OEBITDA in 2019.