Telesat Corporation (NASDAQ:TSAT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Daniel Goldberg: I just say we, like, you know, we gave a range of guidance. It can accommodate a range of different outcomes if you know, so, yes, it accommodates all kinds of different outcomes with EchoStar, my own guess is we get a partial renewal with them, but it’s just too early to say. They’ve got work to do on their side in terms of, you know, how they go about distributing all the channels that they need to distribute. And so they’ve got work to do with them. We’ve known those guys for a long, long time. We have a good relationship with them. But it’s still some months away, and we developed a guidance range that accommodates just a whole range of different outcomes for them.

Marcello Chermisqui: And that satellite, does that represent a significant, much more revenue versus other Nimiq satellites or other satellites you have? Or is it pretty consistent with, in terms of size, scale of other ones?

Daniel Goldberg: I’d say of the Nimiqs kind of same order of magnitude with, you know, Nimiq 4, Nimiq 5, Nimiq 6, recognizing, I should say, if you go back to the original rates on because Nimiq 4 and Nimiq 5 have been renewed at lower rates – much lower rates than their first 15 years of life. But if you went back and looked at the rates on the original rates on Nimiq 4, Nimiq 5, and Nimiq 6, yes, they’re kind of all in the same ballpark.

Marcello Chermisqui: Very helpful. Thanks so much for answering the questions.

Daniel Goldberg: You’re welcome.

Michael Bolitho: Okay, we have one more – we have time for one more brief question.

Operator: Thank you. And the last question is from Mr. Joe Ghergurovich from Sixth Street. Please go ahead.

Joe Ghergurovich: Hi, thanks for squeezing me in here. Most of my questions have been answered. I guess just one on the fourth quarter performance EBITDA coming in better than expected. Was there – were there any one-time items in there or what was driving that?

Daniel Goldberg: And overall, I think it’s just sort of timing, the timing of other expenditures, particularly as we invest in sort of Lightspeed going forward. As you can probably tell, we control the OpEx pretty, pretty tightly. And so, you know, with the program as soon as we get going in 2024, that’s why we accept overall guidance. So I’d say that’s kind of one of the main contributing elements in addition to the frugality of how we manage the business.

Joe Ghergurovich: Got it. And then just one more on – so, just to be clear, the $700 million of government funding that you were in advanced discussions or as of last quarter, are you saying now that the whole $2.1 billion government funding is now secured and you expect to release details after the close.

Daniel Goldberg: I don’t know what the $700 million reference is to. We had noted in the earnings release, and I reiterated it in my remarks that that we expect to have about $750 million of savings relative to what our original funding plan was. And by savings, I mean savings in terms of our cost of borrowings in addition to the $2 billion CapEx savings. And then as far as that, $2.1 billion, so there, I’d say stay tuned. The government of Canada, we would expect, would be a meaningful amount of our government partner funding sources. We expect that Quebec, as I mentioned earlier, will also be part of that. And so I would just say stay tuned. We expect to make some information available in the near term around the Government of Canada financing. And then – it’s not going to be too long until we do our Q1 call. So we’ll probably be able to provide a bit of an update there as well.

Joe Ghergurovich: Got it. Thank you very much for your time.

Daniel Goldberg: Thank you, Joe. Alright. Well, listen, everyone, thank you very much for joining us this morning. As I mentioned, our Q1 call is kind of around the corner. So we look forward to speaking with everyone again then. Thank you very much.

Andrew Browne: Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. The conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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