Think they're going to have our mics go live. So we have to talk nicely about. Everybody in the crowd now. Yeah. Welcome back. Jason Gursky, Citi's aerospace and defense analyst. I had the pleasure this morning of welcoming Mike Greenley, the CEO of MDA. I count Mike as an old friend. The two of us used to be colleagues at one point when we both worked at Maxar prior to MDA's spin out of Maxar in 2020. 2019. 2020.
Yeah. 2020.
Ish. Yeah, something like that.
2019. It all started to 2020. It closed
Right.
April 7, 2020. We were independent and off on our way.
Very, very good. Well, you know, maybe for those that aren't as familiar with the company, maybe a little bit of background on MDA, because it's not just a spin out of Maxar. It has a very long heritage in Canada.
Absolutely.
And I have to say this for those in the room, the next time you're in Canada. I know that we don't oftentimes pick up cash anymore, but if you do pick up the $5 bill there and it actually has one of MDA's products on the back of it, is that still the case?
Yeah.
Okay. Okay, good.
I didn't want to buy a $5 bill. We used to have a radar satellite on $100 bill.
Okay.
At one time as. So we picked up a bit of lots of pushing stamps too, over t ime.
Okay, awesome. All right, so why don't you give us a little bit of background on the company in the long.
Yeah. So MDA Space, pure-play space-based company, it's about 56 years old, started in Canada by some folks in British Columbia and Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Dettwiler, which started MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, which became MDA, excuse me. Their focus was on creating a place where really strong technical engineering talent could stay employed in Canada, wouldn't feel they have to leave the country to go and find adventures in life. Straight away, the company got into space and has been part of the space community ever since. So the history of the business in terms of being like legitimate leaders in radar-based Earth observation, space robotics and communication satellites, all has a 40- to 60-year history. Each of those three lines, which are the three areas where MDA Space is a legitimate leader. The company grew up over time.
It was like private, public. It'd been in and out of the markets and then decided at one time that it needed to grow beyond Canada and ended up sliding down the United States, creating Maxar, becoming part of Maxar. And then like we talked about earlier, in the 2019 timeframe, Maxar decided to divest MDA and we got picked up by Canadian private equity led group and became a standalone company once again headquartered in Canada. A year later, April of 2021 went public. And that's what we've been doing for the last four years now, trading on the Canadian Toronto s tock.
Right. Okay, great. For those that might be a little bit less familiar with what you're doing today, maybe let's just spend a few minutes on, you know, the three business segments. Maybe have you describe what each one of them does today? Maybe some key programs in each one of t hem?
Yeah, sure. So there's three business areas in MDA Space. The first is Geointelligence, where that's involved in Earth observation and space observation. We do two main things there. One is to own and operate RADARSAT-2, which is a radar satellite that we primarily deliver radar based Earth observation data and imagery to primarily defense and intelligence customers around the world. There's some commercial customers, but the bulk of it is defense and intelligence customers around the world. So we operate that. Our largest investment right now is in CHORUS, which is our next generation of our radar based Earth observation satellites which we intend to launch in mid-2026, which will be the follow on to RADARSAT-2.
They'll operate together and then over time RADARSAT-2 will probably get too old and then CHORUS will be the one coming up that'll keep it going into the future. So we do that and we. Excuse me. And we deliver. We also deliver Earth observation satellites to government customers, primarily the Canadian government through that business. And we deliver space observation satellites to government customers, primarily Canada. So there's a strong pipeline in that business to deliver new satellite deals to the Canadian government over t ime.
Move on before from that if that's okay. I'll give you a chance to get a drink of water. The space observation side of it. I don't remember that. Tell me a little bit more.
Canada has a satellite called Sapphire, which is an optical-based space observation satellite that we have the operational contract for. A lot of these satellites that we deliver to the government. We also get the operational contracts for. So we currently have service contracts to operate about 88% of Canada's satellites. But in the space observation business we built Sapphire, which is a space observation satellite and we have the operational contract for that today. And that data feed is contributed into the United States combined space observation picture. Canada has a number of programs through its Department of Defence that are coming up into the next sort of seven years, which will be to do the next generation of space observation capability. So there's new opportunities in the pipeline to be able to deliver, you know, further space observation satellites to t hat.
When was Sapphire l aunched?
Oh, I forget the date, but i t's been
A long t ime.
Yeah, it's been several y ears.
Okay. When we say space observation, we're not checking out stars, we're checking out other a ssets.
We're tracking satellite constellations, we're tracking satellites, we're keeping track of who's getting close to who and what's going on up t here.
Right.
It's a defense a ctivity.
Right, right. Okay, great. So, yeah.
Sorry. So that's Geointelligence business area, Earth and space observation and delivering satellites and owning and operating RADARSAT-2. Secondary is robotics and space operations. So we build space robotics. Started years ago with Canadarm. We put the robotics on all the space shuttles and flew 100 missions there. Then Canadarm2, which is the robotics on the International Space Station. And we've flown for 25 years there now with five years to go. And we're working on Canadarm3, which is the robotics for Gateway, the new space station that will orbit the moon as part of Artemis. And we've spun that technology out into MDA SKYMAKER, which is a new commercial line of robotics products that we're offering to the commercial market for commercial space stations, for on-orbit servicing, on-orbit assembly, debris removal and the like. That team also works on rovers.
We've had rover technology on Mars now for over 15 years. And we have two large rover pursuits for the Moon right now that we're part of. So that's robotics and rovers is in the robotics and space operations business. We just completed new facilities that we moved into in the past year there, which includes multiple mission operations centers for us to be able to operate robotics on orbit, both low-Earth orbit and at the Moon.
As part of our moving forward offering, we are now starting to bid the robotic systems and the operational services contracts to operate those robotics because we have so much experience over the last 40 years of planning and supporting robotic operations. So that's the second business area. And then the third is satellite systems where we build satellite subsystems that sell to other satellite manufacturers. We've been doing that for 60 years. Most geosynchronous satellites in the world, well over 80% of the orders globally, will typically include some subsystems from MDA Space in Montreal from satellite systems. And then as low Earth orbit constellations have come into favor over the last decade, we've been able to pick up subsystems, antenna systems, some payload work on multiple of those and scale up our business.
And then in the last three years now, we started to bid and win full satellites. And so now we deliver full satellites into low Earth orbit constellations and have come to market with MDA AURORA, which is our new digital satellite product, which we've sold to Telesat for broadband communications for their, for their constellation. And the recent announcement last couple of weeks to Globalstar for direct-to-device communications for talking directly to your smartphone. So the MDA AURORA product is really kind of finding its place in the market. And we have a really strong pipeline. Our biggest pipeline in the business right now is for communication satellites for low Earth orbit c onstellation.
Great. Why don't we spend just a few extra minutes maybe on satellite systems?
Sure.
Right. Because I think that's the area of the business that has. Maybe been growing the fastest. It is, you know, kind of at the center of this revolution. Revolution, maybe in LEOs. Right. So for those in the room, geosynchronous satellites are those that sit way high up 22,000 miles or kilometers. I can't remember t hem.
Well, about 20,000 mi, about 35,000 km up GEO.
Yep. And it rotates at the same pace of the Earth. And therefore you can go on top of your roof, point your DirecTV satellite dish at the sky and it doesn't lose the satellite because the satellite is kind of following the same pace of the Earth. And we've got a bunch of those operators have been around for decades. Right. Since the 1960s, probably whenever Intelsat was first stood up. Right. But they are now moving toward the LEO belt for a number of different reasons. Maybe you can go into why they're moving there. That might be helpful for everybody.
Sure.
And then secondly, maybe just to describe, you know, the mission sets that are being operated in LEO today. Sure. What that competitive landscape looks like, your customers, how they're competing against each other, and you know, w hich customers you're most aligned with?
Sure. Yeah. So with the transition to low Earth orbit, which is about sort of 500 kilometers above the Earth, to maybe 1500 kilometers above the Earth, in that zone, you build constellations of satellites that are rotating around the Earth every day at high speed. In terms of why people are doing that. For Earth observation, it's to be close to the Earth to be able to get good imagery of the Earth. But for communications, it's to l ower latency, higher speed of communications back and forth to the Earth in addition to resiliency.
So from a defense perspective, if you had one satellite in geosynchronous orbit that was covering a third of the Earth for communications, if an enemy took out one of those satellites, you would definitely lose capacity. If you have a low Earth Orbit constellation of 150 satellites that's giving you global coverage around the Earth, and an enemy takes out one satellite, it won't really affect your network performance. Everything will be fine and the enemies just expose themselves that they're going to take out your satellites and they're probably going to have a bad day. So you get much stronger resilience in your robustness of your communication systems with higher speed of performance by being in low Earth Orbit.
That's driving that trend in terms of like what the use cases are for, that is three main areas. One is broadband communications so large like Internet data access type communications. The second is direct to device communications to talk directly to your smartphone or smart devices. And the third is the Internet of Things which will be machine to machine communication to track assets all over the world of different types and be able to talk to assets around the world of different types. And there's definitely groups around the world that are working on this.
In terms of the people that are doing this, it starts with the folks that have been doing space-based communications for decades. So usually they have a SAT in their name. So Intelsat, Eutelsat, Telesat, you know, Viasat, all these SAT companies that have been operating communication satellites for years are now moving their communication networks and services from geosynchronous orbit, where they had made a living on broadcast and government communications and the like, to now coming down into low Earth orbit and getting into more commercial networks and you know, everyday communications. The scale for them has the opportunity to greatly increase.
In addition to them, we start to see companies coming into the market, so we see SpaceX with Starlink having their own network, they're building their own satellites and operating their own networks. You know, the Kuiper network in the Amazon company also having plans to build and operate their own network. Other businesses are looking at having their own communication networks or partnering with the SAT type companies to be able to get their services, but in addition to startups, they're looking to raise capital to then operate a space network as a business.
As the cost of launch has continued to come down and the volume of low Earth Orbit satellites has come up, then you end up with a lower cost environment to be able to enter the market with us creating a digital satellite like MDA AURORA. It has a much higher operating efficiency so people can access the market now. They can operate more cost effectively. Business cases are closing and people are looking to space networks now to really provide global communications, and so that's what's happening in the market for us. The competitors in the market are still largely the traditional satellite developers. The Thales and the Airbus and the Lockheed Martin and the larger aerospace and defense companies that have delivered big satellites. Maxar, these companies have been out there competing for satellite opportunities on constellations. We've always been involved in those at the subsystem level.
But three or four years ago we decided to move up to the full satellite level and compete for the full satellite. And we started, you know, immediately started to win with Globalstar's first expansion and then the Telesat win and now the second iteration expansion of Globalstar into digital satellites. And so we have a very, very strong pipeline there that we're pursuing sort of, you know, $13 billion-$15 billion of opportunity over the next five years of people that we're talking to and giving quotes to for a range of different constellations. So as a result of that, you know, that's caused us to lean into our expansion.
So we're expanding our factory, you know, doubling our manufacturing footprint, putting in high volume manufacturing systems so that a year from now we'll be able to produce at a rate of two satellites a day for our MDA AURORA products. So that'll be quite a shift. You know, right now we sort of produce at about one a week pace and then a year from now we'll be doing two a day pace as a result of this infrastructure investment that we're making. So we think that'll the technology advancement that we have right now and the digital satellite combined with the high volume output that we have will hold us in a strong competitive position as we go through the next five y ears.
Right, okay. I do want to touch a little bit more on the, on the technology and the competitive modes before we get there. Can we just talk a little bit about the landscape that your customers are operating in? Because we've got. You know, Starlink, which is a SpaceX product. We've got OneWeb out there. We've got Kuiper.
Yep, coming.
Coming. Right, Telesat.
Yep.
C oming as well. Globalstar now. Well, not now, but they, you know, they're there, they're there. Right. And you're doing more with them. And yet you're, you're talking about a $13billion-$15 billion potential pipeline. And these are, I'm guessing, a lot of these SAT companies that have been operating in geo, coming down into LEO. I get, I guess, two questions. One is like from, you know, front pages of New York Times or what's the name of the paper in Toronto?
Globe and Mail.
They were, thank you. We're all going to be worried about, oh my God, we're not going to be able to see the stars. Anymore because there are going to be. So many of these satellites flying around. Let's talk a little bit about the congested airspace but I think most importantly I'd like to understand. Where this is all going. It seems like there's going to be a lot of satellites flying around and a lot of potential capacity. What do you have to believe from a capacity perspective, from a demand, like how much demand is out there for capacity to believe that all of these constellations are going to be s uccessful?
Yeah, I think each in our, you know, review we you know sort of filter our pipeline and really try to engage firmly with people that you know have the financing and the economic position to really do this. You know, there are some people that have lived a bit more on a dream and we really haven't engaged with them so much. But the folks that we work with and have in our pipeline that we're giving quotes to, you know, they really have the means to do these things which usually means they've got, you know, some forms of financing but also anchor customers for their systems. I think that if you look at humanity and our interest in communications and data based communications and even voice based communications, like we seem to have an insatiable appetite.
And so we haven't had challenges whereby in the past we like laid too many fiber optic cables under the ocean and had too much capacity or whatever. It's always I want more. I want to move from text to data to voice to streaming video, to be able to constantly get more and more features and service from communications. Space-based communications is, you know, entering an era whereby it's affordable. Its performance is going to be at a level that's comparable to the terrestrial communications and so it can fill in all the gaps. We have a third of the world that doesn't have access to the Internet today. So you know, all the rural and northern communities and you know, Africa, like, you know, parts of South America, Asia, you know, large populations that can be brought on to these data networks.
So, a lot of these folks see really good business opportunities whereby I think in the future you'll be in a building, in a city or wherever on Wi-Fi, then you'll go into town on a cellular network, and as soon as you leave town you'll be on a space network. And you'll be on a space network for wherever you go in the world until you're inside the next city. And so I think that the using the space networks to fill in all the gaps, bring in a couple billion more users into, you know, high intensity networks around the world is a great opportunity. And then the competitive nature of that is such that people are just going to want more features and more, more competition. So somewhere out there there's presumably some limit.
But right now in terms of the people that we see and the people we're talking to, they've all got legitimate business cases, legitimate anchor customers and relationships whereby. They're looking to connect the world in different ways. You start to see space network folks interacting with all the different mobile phone companies in different ways and then different media companies in different ways. And so the business of operating global networks will now just include space networks it seems as part of this.
And then there are some corporations that are looking at just having their own space networks as you get into more of the Internet of Things mode. If you're a global corporation, you have multi-billion-dollar enterprise around the world and it's to your corporate advantage to have all your, whatever you do connected globally all the time. To spend $1 billion-$2 billion in a space network as a piece of infrastructure for your corporation, that's not a crazy thing to do for your company. It would seem. You have a question in the audience. Very enthusiastic question in the audience. Just so you know, as a.
Okay, I'm going to see here, do we have somebody running around with a mic? Okay, well she makes her way over. Just one follow up question and then we'll get right to you.
Yeah.
Let's see here, want to talk a little bit about the technology. The thing that is kind of enabling you all today. That you think is the competitive moat because you mentioned Boeing and Thales and you know, Maxar and others that are out there and you mentioned your d igital a nd your capacity.
Yeah.
Right. So capacity I think we all get our head around, maybe talk a little bit about the digital payload a nd h ow that's different from what others are doing?
Yeah. So to have a full digital satellite. Right now we've managed to do that and are in the market with a full digital satellite a bit ahead of others. Others have some digital features in their satellites. But for us to have a full digital dynamic beamforming satellite is definitely a strong competitive feature in our offering into the market. In a communication satellite, it'll have beams that are the communication pipes down to the earth. In an analog satellite, your beam pattern is fixed. So you'll have a certain number of them, say like 16 beams or something in a satellite, and they'll be pointing in a certain pattern and have a certain capacity up and down for communication.
As you move, and as a result, you've got inefficiency in that because you could be flying in a pattern whereby your beams are just pointing out over the ocean or something and they're not making money. In a digital satellite, you get a tremendous increase in the number of beams. You might go from 16 to 500 beams all of a sudden in a digital satellite. The beams are fully software managed and software operated. So they're fully controllable in real time. You're pointing them. You can point them wherever you need to all the time. So they're always pointing where your customers need data. So they're always making money for you. Then you can aggregate them and de-aggregate them in real time. So you can like aggregate multiple beams to make a bigger communications pipe or de-aggregate.
Aggregate them to be able to point in multiple directions. The performance of the operational efficiency of a satellite is greatly enhanced in terms of, you know, really optimizing your communication services from a digital satellite to your customers. That's been tremendous benefit in competing in the market. As a result of that efficiency, sometimes you can operate with fewer satellites. Your global coverage, you can use fewer satellites, which means you have fewer launches. Your actual initiating costs can be improved and then your operational efficiencies can be improved by having a digital dynamic beamforming satellite.
Okay. Awesome.
Yeah.
Still have a q uestion?
I do.
Go for i t.
Yeah, so I'm curious, given all these use cases and companies that have ambitions to commercialize space communications. On the spectrum side, is there enough spectrum available of the right quality for everyone to win in this or even commercialize in this space? I mean, some of the bands that people are operating in are not particularly reliable bands. And so anything that is mission critical defense or intelligence or whatever is going to have a challenge, and tied to that. You know, there's a lot of focus on broadband versus narrowband. And where do you see that? You know, playing out. And then you've got to get these licenses, I think, country by country to offer truly global service. So the broad question is around spectrum and the ability of people to actually do what they want to d o.
It's a huge part of the game for sure, and there's a lot of things to be figured out as we go. So in terms of like sort of clean space spectrum, there's a number of operators that have the rights to, you know, really good space spectrum in different frequency bands and they, and as you mentioned, in different parts of the world. And so that gives them, I think in the near term, potentially like a, in some cases an immediate competitive advantage because they have access to the right spectrum at the right time. We are seeing folks, some of the more popular space network conversations these days. People are using terrestrial spectrum and then trying to manage that from space.
And the risk with that is that you end up with enough power and capability in your satellite that you can use terrestrial spectrum, maintain communication to a small object on earth and be able to focus that power without causing interference in that terrestrial spectrum range that you've been licensed to operate in. You have to be able to do that with power and precision in a way that's not going to cause interference. And that's still to be proven. So a number of folks are running like low levels of satellites, demonstration missions, operating with terrestrial spectrum, trying to figure out if they can do that. Most of our, I think all of our customers right now are those that own space spectrum. And so our near term pipeline is very strong with people that have the rights to do what they want to do.
We're putting satellites up for them with space spectrum. But the spectrum management aspect will be something that will come into play here to see if folks crack the technological challenge of leveraging terrestrial spectrum and from space. And if they can do that efficiently without causing interference, that's something to solve. We've seen sort of some new tiering coming out of like the FCC recently, like opening up some new spectrum opportunities for folks in some of these different ranges.
So I think spectrum management by governments around the world, as you mentioned, to have your rights in different countries is going to be an ongoing dialogue and then potentially opening up technologically like new frequency ranges, like new spectrum ranges from space in some of the higher frequencies. To be able to provide some of these services will be a future opportunity as well. But you're absolutely right that paying attention to spectrum management and who has the rights to spectrum and if people are, you know, able to access the markets that they have their business plans for is a legitimate thing to pay attention to in evaluating all of t his.
Great. Why don't we go one more over here?
Yeah. One more question since we're just talking broadly about s pace.
Yep.
How's launch capacity? You know, there's several large launch providers out there that have the ability to put up satellites with certain amounts of frequency. And you know, I guess the question partly is this. SpaceX have a, you know, a lock because they control so much of the capacity of launch. Can they just, you know, with their high frequency of launch, just put them up, put them down and just crowd out a lot of aspiring c onstellations. Because there's a lot of constellations. Sorry, as you. Yeah, as you d emonstrated. Just how does launch capacity play with kind of the building out of c onstellations?
Well, right now I think launch capacity globally continues to expand. We have, you know, up and comers in the launch business that are, you know, continuing to mature and continuing to advance their rocket systems to be able to bring more capacity to launch. So that continues to be a bit of a growing part of the business. I have not bumped into anybody yet. It may exist out there, but I have not bumped anybody. As it says, I can't get my business plans accomplished because I can't get access to launch. So I haven't seen that yet. People are getting access to what they need based on their business plans to be able to launch and the cost to launch continues to come down. I think that as the larger rocket systems come into play in the next five years.
So the SpaceX example that most people see on the media most often is Starship, you know, but we've seen some Blue Origin rocket activity. Now we see, you know, Rocket Lab working on their next generation larger rockets. As these larger rockets come into play, then that's going to further increase capacity. You know, we get along well. For example, like with SpaceX and the other launch companies and you know, designing our satellites into the various launch systems works well. Our customers are getting the access that they need. I think that as interest in space and space networks and space observation and space infrastructure continues to expand, these larger rocket systems that will come into play in the next five years will have a major step function increase in launch capacity.
You know, right now in a Falcon 9 maybe you've got, I don't know, 16 to 20 or the most satellites in the nose cone of a rocket and a Starship. You could have like 150, 200, you know, like so very different capacity to be able to, to be able to get things into orbit. You know, I think that the launch will keep up with the, with the opportunity from what we can see so far. It will only get cheaper with those volumes.
Right. Going back to some of the wins we mentioned, I can't remember if we talked about it while the mic was hot or not, but you guys recently announced a follow on order from Globalstar. Yeah, I think you call it a follow on I guess for kind of a new, new set of b irds. Right. Altogether different than what you're currently doing for t hem.
Yeah.
So let's spend a few minutes talking about what you, what exactly Globalstar intends to do with it. I think it's no secret that Apple is a big customer of theirs and this direct to device constellation that they're putting up is to help support or kind of enable Apple's ability to begin using our iPhones anywhere in the world. But I think a week, 10 days ago there was an announcement that Apple's also going to be testing out t heir phones on Starlink as well. So help us kind of u nderstand. What the development of this technology looks like and why somebody like Apple might be helping to support Globalstar but also working with Starlink. Why? Why would they do t hat?
Yeah, so first of all, I won't know the answer like because I'm not inside that tent. Yeah. And so my job is to provide satellites to Globalstar. Globalstar's job is to operate a space network. Yes. Apple is their largest customer for that space network. So that's how that hierarchy works. And then Apple decides what it wants to do with that network capacity. Certainly what we're doing is building direct to device satellites for Globalstar. So that is for the direct to device communications. I think that like my just really observation of these things is to take terrestrial activity and then apply it to space. So you know, a company like Apple wants their devices to work on all the mobile networks in the world. Presumably they would want their devices to work on all global networks, which will include space networks.
If you see the relationships that are developing, it's a lot of the same players. Right. So you've got the phone companies in the example that you mentioned with SpaceX, the T-Mobile working with SpaceX and Starlink to be able to add space network capacity to its offering in the market. You know, and so the phone developers are going to want their phones to operate on these networks and so but then there is the Globalstar network which is for sure, you know, obviously, you know, really well connected into Apple to be able to provide, you know, for sure service globally for the features that they're putting in their devices. So there's a, you know, that's there and then there's like make sure it works wherever it needs to.
So the capabilities that you are launching for Globalstar, that'll help support the Apple devices that'll be voice t ext.
Right now we provide satellites that have capacity. What you do, what features you put over that capacity. If you work up the hierarchy of you know, emergency texting to normal texting to data to voice to video or something, if I think that would probably be the hierarchy in terms of the insatiable appetite for capacity, it would move up a ladder like that. Right. That's a business decision that would be like a, you know, Globalstar and their customers business decision about, you know, how much capacity are you putting in the network, what features and functions are you going to enable in the market and all that kind of stuff. Our job is just to make sure we put satellites out there that have the capacity r equested.
Right, okay. So to put a button on this, so you've got your space systems business that has secured quite a few contracts here, decent sized backlog pipeline, you're expanding your capacity, you've got a new digital payload and so we will see lots of revenue growth and potential margin expansion with that. Or is this,
I think, I think definitely revenue growth like first for us as a company right now we've been talking about that. We expect to grow over this five-year period that we're in right now at about a 25% CAGR. And we are, you know, that seems to be happening. And so that's, and then if you look at like, you know, what's driving that, increasingly what's driving that is just execution of our backlog. You know, we were sort of guiding towards doing around $1 billion of revenue last year and we're coming into 2025 now with like a $5 billion backlog with this new Globalstar order. So typically that's you know, around 36 months duration c ontracts.
So if, you know, if you're doing $ 5 million of backlog over three years, like just your execution of our signed contracts is going to cause continued growth in the business as we go through time with a large pipeline to keep hopefully filling, replacing, expanding that backlog so we're definitely in, you know, growth mode as we go forward into the future on this, on the communication satellites as we activate a year from now that sort of high volume manufacturing capacity. There'll be legitimate opportunities I think to you know, with new orders, continue to have high volume which has the chance for lower cost because you're procuring at volume and then a lot of opportunity for learning under high volume manufacturing which could further decrease, you know, costs.
So, as a result of those things, you could get some margin expansion, like logically you would expect to. Right now, we're not forecasting any. We hold the position that, you know, we're a 19%-20% sort of EBITDA company, and but you know, our eyes on the ball for sure to get this set up, operate it, make the most of it. Logically, you know, two, three years from now, you know, we should expect to have some opportunity.
Right. Right. Okay, we've got four minutes left. I want to spend a few more minutes on the other two businesses. Sure. Do like rapid fire.
Sure.
It's o kay.
Yep
So let's talk really quickly about the robotics business and the growth drivers there and some of the unique partnerships. I think that you have formed too, maybe some investments as w ell. So, just talk.
Yeah.
If you think about three, four things that are going to drive that business over the next five years.
Biggest thing is execution on Canadarm3. We've got a large $1 billion-plus contract there for a high, high-end artificial intelligence-based next-generation robotic system. And so just executing on that over the next three or four years will continue to cause and drive growth. Second is MDA SKYMAKER commercial product line going into the commercial space stations under development, on-orbit servicing, and space-based assembly manufacturing. So there's a good pipeline there of conversations so that over the next five years have the chance to result in some decent orders there on some of the commercial space stations. We have taken like at least a small equity position in one of them and there would be opportunities for us to do that with others. That's not an exclusive relationship.
So, us partnering with space infrastructure players, space stations or other types of space infrastructure and bringing the robotic systems and robotic operations as part of that capability. That's definitely an emerging opportunity for us. The Moon would be another one, whereby that introduces other big projects like full rover projects. Canada has a CAD 1 billion rover project for the Moon, so we would actively pursue that. We're on a team for NASA's rover project for the Moon. If that team wins, that'll be another great opportunity. These are larger opportunities for us to get involved in lunar infrastructure with our robotics rovers, remote operation-type systems. That will bring another opportunity for g rowth.
Okay. Okay, great. And then on the Geointelligence side of things, you have AURORA.
Yeah.
Coming online.
Course.
Excuse AURORA is the form factor for the communications. Sorry, too many celestial things going on here. But on CHORUS, talk a little bit about, you know, the vision here. So you've got a base business today on RADARSAT. I would imagine some of that will, you know, you'll transition that over to CHORUS. Yep. But what's the growth opportunity once CHORUS is up and r unning?
Yeah, I think it's, it seems to be strong. Like we have a strong customer base that's been with us for a long time on RADARSAT-2. They're excited about CHORUS. And so dozens of conversations literally like with customers around the world about what their CHORUS buy would look like. And people are looking to expand in a number of cases, expand what they would like to do with us. So that's a great feeling. So as we go through this last sort of 16-18 months before launch, like the, you know, all those things come into, you know, get firm now. So that's, that's very exciting. So I think that, you know, we do have legitimate growth that will come from that in terms of the additional orders.
And then I think over time, like we'll keep looking at CHORUS as a constellation and you know, look at what partnerships and combined data offering. Well, so many customers now want data fusion. They want information from different data sources to be able to solve their their information question. And so we work with a lot of other satellite operators and providers and and so I think that building those sort of fused information products for customers will be a second area of growth in addition to just pure pure data growth from CHORUS.
And then that team, as I mentioned, it sells Earth and space observation satellites to primarily the Canadian government. There's a multibillion-dollar pipeline there over the next seven years for Canadian government satellites that they're pursuing. So they'll get lift in that business as well over the next, like I say, five to seven years coming as a result of just selling. Additional satellites
And your satellite systems business will build.
Usually, like not every time, but most t imes.
Right, okay. And so Planet on the Electro-Optical side recently announced that they contracted with an unnamed country to go build a constellation of Electro-Optical satellites and become. And they'll operate the satellites. So kind of like an outsourced National Reconnaissance Office for a country, but that's for Electro-Optical. Are you seeing similar demand signals on the SAR side o f things?
I think t here is a bit of a trend of governments going commercial, not necessarily to buy the satellites like in the Planet example, that's what you mentioned, but to pick up the service c ommercially.
Yeah.
Like the U.S. DoD is going commercial. NATO says they're going to have a commercial space plan. It's published in 2025. We see India having a commercial element of their space plan. So, like, a number of countries around the world that have capability are looking to like, pick up a commercial service as opposed to just building and launching and operating their own satellite. So commercial partnership is definitely a trend that we talk to folks around the world with, whether that's to, you know, pick up data from CHORUS. Or, you know, what could we do together to have a domestic capability. So there is a bit of an increased conversation level around the world like that. Yeah.
Okay g reat. I just noticed that w e're. The clock is going the wrong d irection.
That means we're in negative time. Yeah, we're in t rouble.
Yeah, exactly. So with that, Mike, I want to thank you very m uch thanks, everybody in the audience, for listening in, and look forward to doing it again next y ear. We'll see you next time.
It's always good to come to Miami in February. All right.