All right. G ood afternoon, everyone and thank you for sticking around for our final presentation of the day. Next up on the agenda is MDA Space. Presenting from the company today is Mike Greenley, CEO. MDA is a leading provider of advanced space technology, servicing almost all sectors of the rapidly growing space economy. Mike, he's going to come up and give a presentation and throughout, we're going to take some questions. If you do have questions, just raise your hand and we will try and get to them. Thanks.
Al righty, thanks. Good afternoon. As mentioned, I'm Mike Greenley. I'm the CEO of MDA Space. I'm just going to jog through key points, tell the story of MDA Space just using our investor deck and then take any questions that people might have. MDA Space is about a 55, 56-year-old Canadian company focused obviously on the space sector, outer space, not interior space, not interior design, anything like that, but outer space. I n terms of what we're up to,, w e have about 3,400 employees these days, facilities across Canada, head office here in Toronto, with satellite robotics manufacturing here, satellite manufacturing in Montreal, our Earth observation and space observation business out in Vancouver, as three big centers of mass of the business across Canada. A lot of growth these days. 2024 revenues were about CAD 1.1 billion.
This year's guidance, we'll get to that in a minute, is around CAD 1.6 billion, but steady growth. We did about CAD 400 million a year in 2021 when we IPO'ed, about CAD 800 million a year in 2023, CAD 1.6 billion in 2025. This doubling every two years pace is sort of the pattern of the business. The things we're involved in are across the space sector in our three business areas, Earth and space observation, robotics and space operations, which is in space infrastructure and satellite systems, which is largely around building communication satellites. We've been doing this for 55 years. Like I said, we've contributed to over 450 missions in space, all of which have been successful over that period of time. A really extensive, deep understanding of space, and what it takes to design and operate in the different orbits in space.
In terms of what we do, I've mentioned it a couple of times, but if we take this diagram sort of from the right to the left, in launch, we do not work in launch. We launch on other people's systems. We take advantage of all the advances of companies like SpaceX. We work in three areas that are strong growing areas of why people launch, why people go and operate in space. The first is in geointelligence, which is all about Earth and space observations, putting satellites up to observe the Earth, usually to detect change, but also to measure all kinds of different things. We are experts or world leaders in synthetic aperture radar satellites, so radar satellites that are sending a ping down to the Earth and measuring a return, which is used to take pictures and observe the Earth for defense and intelligence.
We're really good at maritime domain awareness, where are all the ships in the ocean, for example,? A lso, measuring things like ice, a lot of different things around climate change, deforestation, a range of different reasons why people buy our imagery from our radar sats too, or in our future, our CHORUS satellites that we're developing to do Earth observation. That same business builds satellites and turns them around, and looks out into space to do space observation, to be able to track all the satellites in space. Second reason people launch things into space is to provide communication networks. This is the fastest growing area of the space economy today, and therefore the fastest growing area of MDA Space's business, providing satellites for low Earth orbit and mid-Earth orbit constellations to provide data networks, to bring internet data services around the world.
There's still 1/3 of the world, over 2 billion people, that aren't connected to the internet or to data. T hese networks will bring that to them, in addition to covering all rural and urban areas on Earth. There's also a growing fastest lane of growth, probably right now it's direct-to-device communication networks, putting up communication networks that will talk directly to your cell phone. These are like cell phone towers in space to ensure that the entire Earth will be covered five years from now with cell phone service from space. You'll be on your phone in a building like this on Wi-Fi. You'll go out into the city and be on cellular towers.
As soon as you leave town, those rural towers will gradually probably go away, and rural and all remote regions will all be on space-based networks around the world, as we go forward into the future with those space networks interacting with and mixed up in various business models with the phone companies, the mobile network operators around the world. The last area , the reason we go into space is to live and work in space, and our robotics and space operations works in that area. In living and working in space, we're talking about space stations. There's at least four commercial space stations under development right now, like the International Space Station today, that will go out of business in five years.
There's companies building new space stations that are going to need things like the sensors and robotics, Canadarm that MDA Space has built, and MDA SKYMAKER are a commercial derivative of Canadarm technology. These are the areas that we work in space. They kind of grow at different paces. The fastest growth area right now is in satellite systems. You can see it's making up the largest portion of our revenues these days. With all the defense and intelligence interests around the world, the world's a stressful place. There's increasing interest in keeping track of what's happening on Earth and detecting change, where are people moving and what are they up to? I think there's going to be some strong growth in the next few years.
In addition to, with the changes in the U.S. p osture globally, countries are increasingly interested in the last couple of quarters of taking care of themselves more, having stronger defense programs, caring about their sovereignty, being able to monitor and control their countries by themselves. The interest in Earth and space observation is increasing. I think that'll be the next wave. As we head towards the moon in the next few years, we have 50 countries collaborating with NASA to live and work on the moon. We have four commercial space stations being developed. We have people interested in building things in space, having power stations in space, probably 15-20 years out, mining in space. All of these things will drive space infrastructure, which will bring 1/3 wave of growth for us in the robotics and space operations area.
All these things I just said is just kind of evidenced in this chart, which is, the outer space is a legitimate economic zone. It's a persistently growing legitimate economic zone that continues to grow. It's about $500 billion or $600 billion a year in size today. The most conservative forecast in the Western world says it'll be about $1.8 trillion, a couple trillion a year 10 years from now, in 2035. Interesting to me though, is that the China literature would say that the Earth- to- moon economic zone is expected to be $10 trillion a year by 2050. Somewhere between $2 trillion and $10 trillion a year is a legitimate economic zone for us to pay attention to, that's growing at a rapid rate, that is not going to go away.
It's not like the 1970s where you launch into space, you prove you could get to the moon and you don't do it again. It's like, we have 300 launches this year around the world going into outer space for different business reasons. The cost of those launches keeps going down. It's a persistent economic zone that we can access, and that is increasingly becoming commercial and growing at a rapid rate. The trends that are driving that are these lower launch costs. It was about $20,000 a kilogram to launch on Space Shuttle. It's around $2,000 a kilogram to launch on a SpaceX rocket today. It'll be $200 a kilogram to launch on a SpaceX rocket five years from now. These networks are bringing global connectivity, which is really strong business models around the world for strong data and cell phone services around the world.
There's increased interest in living and working in space, and a really strong national security vector in the space growth. As space is used to provide defense to the Earth, people will say that the next global conflict on Earth, the first 15 minutes will be a very intense battle in space to try to turn off and blind the other guy, and take away their communications and all the things that we learn to live with every day that provides our situational awareness here on Earth from space, turn that off and then fight a battle on Earth.
It's a very, very strategic domain s pace is, in addition to its own contested domain, whereby there are spacecraft today that cozy up to other spacecraft and see what they're doing, and give them a poke or try to turn them off or listen to what their data streams are. It's a very combative environment all by itself, increasingly so in space, which is driving increasing demands for military activity in orbit. MDA Space works with a wide range of space companies. We're a 50-year-old space company, which means we can get the big projects. We can get the billion-dollar projects and work with the big aerospace and defense players, but we have agility. We're an independent space company. We're very agile.
We work well with a lot of other people, and we work a lot with a lot of the space startups around the world as partners and even customers for us to bring space capability, s o a really broad range of firms that we're working with. You can see here we're sort of 60/40 these days, commercial, government. You can see a lot of activity in Canada, with a good load in the United States in terms of where our revenues are coming from. Our scorecard the last few years is pretty good.
I talked about our growth a little bit earlier when I started there, but you can see as we became an independent company again, we were bought out of another space company called Maxar in 2020 by a Canadian-led private equity, and then listed on the TSX one year later, April 7th, 2021, as part of the 2021 IPO gang that occurred across Canada. You can see there, the backlog growth during that period of time. We currently track around a CAD 20 billion pipeline. We have right now about CAD 4.8 billion of backlog at the end of Q1. We would expect that to be like that at the end of this year, if not a little bit bigger, in this CAD 20 billion pipeline that we are engaging in that has booking opportunities over the next five years.
You can see the revenue growth that I already talked about. W e gave guidance at IPO, and said we'd cruise around 18%-20% adjusted EBITDA. We've delivered over 20% adjusted EBITDA for over 10 years now. As our mix in big systems and high growth came, we said, "Well, that might come down a little bit." These days, we say 19%-20% is a good range. We don't see the 18% so much as we go forward into the future. I mentioned the two versions of us, our two faces, big enough to get the billion-dollar contracts, lots of billion-dollar contracts, do the big space projects for governments and companies, small enough to be able to do the agile space startup stuff with very agile players around the world. Very, very unique posture for us that is very attractive.
A lot of CEOs tell me that, "Yes, you have great technology. Yes, you're competitive on price and schedule, but my people like working with your people." Really good people that are technically smart in space, that are transparent and highly collaborative with their partners, that give us a lot of work opportunities. Great facilities across Canada, world-leading space facilities in our sites that allow us to be able to design, build, and test with a significant portion of our investments expanding those capabilities. We've just built a new facility here in Toronto, which is our corporate head office and a robotics center of excellence. We moved in a year ago.
We're currently doubling our manufacturing capability in Montreal with a 185,000 sq ft new building addition, that will take our satellite manufacturing capacity from a high right now of about one satellite a week to a year from now, 10 satellites a week, two satellites a day as we move through this production shift into high volume manufacturing of satellites in Montreal. I mentioned our pipeline. As we grow into the future, you can see kind of a little bit across the bottom there how it's decomposed. The largest portion of that is in satellite systems for low Earth orbit and mid-Earth orbit constellations, a solid chunk of opportunities in the robotics and space operations business area for commercial robotics opportunities, and then some commercial, but also some big government Earth observation contracts to deliver satellites largely into the Government of Canada in the geointelligence business.
We've given guidance for the year that says the trend will continue. We've been growing at this 25%-30% a year clip on average. We expect that sort of pace to continue for at least the next three years, with this $5 billion of backlog that we have and this $20 billion of pipeline that we're talking to. We expect this trend to continue this year, guiding towards around $1.6 billion, like I said, in revenue and maintaining that sort of 19%-20% EBITDA margin rate. In the three business areas, just to put a bit more color on them, satellite systems is all around building satellites, primarily for communications. The big project examples that happen there are great anchor customers for us.
Globalstar down in the U.S., with their customer Apple building networks for direct-to-device communications to talk to iPhones around the world, Telesat Lightspeed here in Canada, excellent 200-satellite network to be able to bring broadband data to the world. All this is driven by MDA AURORA, our digital satellite product. This is a world-leading, no fooling around, commercial digital satellite, software-defined, dynamic beamforming, fully digital reconfigurable satellite that is leading the pack in the world competitively by probably about two years, so v ery strategically positioned, market-leading. You've seen us recently do a bit of M&A activity. We're buying a company called SatixFy, which is the chip provider for this digital satellite, space-grade chip, the furthest ahead in the world in that domain.
We're buying that to ensure that we maintain differentiation in this product, and so we can control our roadmaps in this product going forward into the future because it's very clear our customers want to know that's a great digital satellite, but what's version two going to look like and what's version three going to look like as these constellations start to bring a recurring revenue stream for us to? N ot only deliver the first satellites into these constellations, but new satellites to expand those networks and replacement satellites to replace those satellites in those networks moving forward. This is going to turn into a growing and recurring, and steady revenue stream in this space networking business.
In robotics and space operations, it's all about sensors and robotics for a range of reasons in space exploration, space stations for tourism, space stations for industrial parks, on-orbit servicing spacecraft that can go up to satellites and service them and maintain them, and the military versions of those satellites that go up and inspect and poke, and prod other people's satellites for military purposes that we call counter space, which is going to be a strong growing market that you won't hear a lot about in the news, but will absolutely be existing and growing strongly into the future. Big program there is Canadarm3. That's a robotic system for Gateway, a new space station that will orbit the moon.
A little bit in the news lately, because the White House budget recommendations that came out a couple of weeks ago have recommended as part of all of its budget cuts, that Gateway, that space station, not occur. That's a recommendation. It'll be studied by Congress as we go through the summer. We'll see if that sticks or not. Meanwhile, there's a lot of international partners such as Canada. Our customer on that is Canada, to build that robotic system. The European Space Agency has a ton of content on that space station. Everyone's out there exploring, where else are we going to go with the space station if the U.S. decides not to do their part of it, do the rest of us work together and do it ourselves? Do we take those technologies down to the moon and do something on the lunar surface with them?
Do we take that space station to low Earth orbit and use it there, or something else? A lot of investigations to go on. For the next two years, probably that program will continue on its same path while all these things are worked through, and we'll see what the finish to that story is. Could be like it is today, Gateway, the space station continues. Could be that those technologies take a different route further in the future. One of our big investment areas has been in MDA SKYMAKER, which is our commercial robotics line, taking Canadarm technology and creating a commercial, repeatable product line of robotics for commercial space stations, commercial spacecraft, rovers on the moon, rovers on Mars as we go forward into the future. We have a pipeline for these opportunities for this standard product that we're moving out with globally around the world.
In geointelligence, we own and operate RADARSAT-2, and we're investing heavily in MDA Chorus, our next-generation synthetic aperture radar satellite, which is the fourth generation of synthetic aperture radar satellites that we've built for Canada. RADARSAT-1, RADARSAT-2, RADARSAT Constellation Mission, now MDA CHORUS, purely commercial, paid for by ourselves. We will launch and operate it in mid-2026. It has a 15-year design life, which means it'll last 15-20-odd years. It pays back for itself in less than five years. There is just a strong recurring high EBITDA machine afterwards, selling radar-based imagery to defense and intelligence customers and some commercial customers around the world moving forward. This CHORUS satellite is a two-satellite machine, as we see here in the picture, whereby we have a broad area surveillance satellite.
We're world leaders in that, where we can take 500-700 km-wide images of the Earth's surface, to be able to detect things with a trailing satellite about an hour and a half behind it, which is a zoomed-in radar satellite, so that you can see things and then aim the cameras or the imaging system of the zoomed-in satellite to get a close-in look to, what did I just see? This is the first tipping and queuing commercial offering in the global market. Defense and intelligent customers are very interested in it. We've signed over three dozen letters of intent, with different groups and agencies that would intend to buy from CHORUS after it's launched in mid-2026. We're very excited to be able to have this come to market as we go through the next period of time.
That's MDA Space, a Canadian-headquartered, 55, 56-year-old pure-play space company that is going through extensive growth, as the space market is going through high growth. We're growing faster than that market because the niches that we're in, we're the world leaders in each of our three market areas. W e're able to float at a level and grow at a level that's faster than the actual market is growing. With our technology differentiation and our personnel differentiation, we're taking market share as we continue to grow moving forward. With the global dynamics, we would expect to continue to expand globally as we go through the next period of time. We can serve the world commercially here from Canada, no problem. With the change in the U.S. dynamics, there's a big surge in Europe right now to take care of Europe themselves.
A lot of interest in space-based communication networks and observation networks that are European-based. A lot of people, we're feeling a bit of a pull towards Europe to be able to be helpful over there these days. As the U.S. market for the U.S. DOD, where we supply to all of the five U.S. primes, they deliver satellites to the U.S. Department of Defense these days for their Leo constellations. There are bigger opportunities for us there, and that military counter- space market would have some big opportunities for us. You might see us expand and have subsidiaries in Europe and the United States as we go through the next period of time.
If we ever saw the right opportunity to either set up or joint venture or do an acquisition in these regions, that would allow us to further accelerate our growth, by opening up new pipelines with governments in those regions that would not necessarily be accessible from home here in Canada. That is what is going on. Any questions? Yes, sir.
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Yes.
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Yeah. Golden Dome is obviously going to have a large space component because it is all about detection and deterrent from space. I mentioned that in the United States, all five U.S. prime contractors that deliver to the U.S. Department of Defense buy subsystems and [tenants], and other subsystems from us in Montreal. That would certainly, as that accelerated its pace, create opportunities for us with those types of customers. You would have also heard in the news that Mr. Trump said Canada wants to be involved in Golden Dome, but they got to bring their own money.
I think he said something like that. That would be a Trump thing to say. There are Canadian programs that are part of NORAD modernization, and things that are going on in Canada that would put space-based surveillance capability in the north, space-based deterrence capability in the north if there was over-the-horizon threats coming over the top of the Earth's surface. Those Canadian programs would also be, the Canadian Government is looking for, as part of all the programs, what can we do for Canada? How can Canada stand up stronger? How can Canada accelerate its defense spend?
There's a very strong opportunity as you accelerate defense spend to accelerate space spend. Some of the barriers to accelerating defense spend on air, navy, and ground army systems, is that you need the personnel to buy them. You need the personnel to operate them, and you need the personnel to maintain them. You can't just go and have things. You need the systems around them to operate and maintain them. With space, you can go much faster.
You can have very highly effective allied relevant military capability that can be [procured]. Whoop, I'm killing myself here on the mic. Procured commercially with industry, that doesn't require loads of personnel to operate and certainly no personnel to maintain. We can have very effective allied relevant capabilities, such as contributions to a North American Golden Dome type of an environment through our space programs in Canada. We would expect to absolutely get involved in conversations around that, and have opportunities for the space industry in Canada in those areas. Yes, sir.
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Service or recurring revenues, t hat shows up in different ways. One way is in when we own and operate RADARSAT-2. That's us flying our synthetic aperture radar satellite around the world, with customers around the world that have procurement mechanisms that are buying on a persistently recurring basis. They have access to our ground station and ordering desk environments, and they say, "I would like to have this imagery of that location at this time, please. I would like imagery of that location at this time, please." We manage all those orders and queue them appropriately, and direct the satellite and deliver all the imagery requests that they have.
That is very much recurring revenue, book- and- bill revenue on an annual basis as you go through every year, for us in the business. In robotics and space operations, we delivered Canadarm2 to the International Space Station and we have been flying that for 25 years. Each of those 25 years, we have gotten CAD 40 million-CAD 50 million a year of recurring revenue, to provide robotic movement planning support to that system in addition to engineering support to operations, to help work in operation or problem-solve if something happened, in addition to repair, maintenance, and overhaul to Canadarm2 while it is in operations, send up software upgrades. Even right now, we have one of the end effectors of the Canadarm2 that has been brought back from the space station that is in the factory in Montreal. It has been overhauled.
It'll get launched back up, and go and finish its last five years in orbit. That's $40 million-$50 million a year of recurring revenue there. What we're seeing now start to emerge, and it depends on your definition of recurring revenue, but this satellite replacement revenue will be the next and largest growth area of recurring revenue. Each of these low Earth orbit constellations were , satellites ordered 200 satellites with an option for 100 more. Globalstar ordered 17 with an option for 9 more, and then they've ordered 50- odd in their latest order. We're starting to see people building these space networks, and they have bigger goals and objectives for their business. All these orders in our sort of $13 billion-$15 billion low Earth orbit constellation pipeline are for initiating orders to get the constellation working.
As they load it up with capacity, they're going to want to buy more satellites to expand that network, then t hey'll have more in play. The satellites that are being bought either have 10-year design lives or 5-year design lives. They're all going to have to be replaced at the two to six- year mark. The orders will come in to replace them. They won't come in at once. You won't buy 200 and then replace 200. You'll buy 200 and get your network going. You'll monitor the health of them, and t his year I'll replace 25, this year I'll replace 50 and this year I'll replace 25. There'll be a recurring relationship for us to provide satellites, to keep these networks expanding and fresh and current as we move forward into the future.
As we move from the three networks we're contracted for today , to four to five to six constellation networks, we get the initiating orders, we get the expansion orders, we get the replacement orders. With our new chip business internal, bringing out MDA AURORA 2.0, 3.0 and bringing upgrades to this, it'll be very much a recurring revenue type of an environment for us. It's as if you were the cell tower provider on a cellular network, and you constantly had to add towers and replace towers every year, and you're just constantly doing that to be able to keep these cell towers working nd t here are satellites in space. That's going to be a really interesting environment that will emerge over the next five years, and be a very strong recurring model for us moving forward. What else do you got, a nything? Yep.
Is there a zero-sum geopolitical impact with how Canada positions versus the U.S. and vice versa, and potential impact on you?
I don't think so. We have very much a global customer base. Canada is an important customer. Canada needs to have a communication and surveillance capacity for our country, which we can deliver. We are a strong, important supplier, and deliverer into the U.S. and into Europe. We have four sites in England. The Middle East would like us to show up there. I think that we're connected around all over the place. I don't envision something where suddenly we get shut down in some way. No, i t's a really unique thing at the moment.
As Europe wants to expand and they want people to come and play, in the current geopolitical context, it's pretty hard for Lockheed Martin to show up and say, "Hi, I'm Lockheed Martin Europe." They'll be like, "Nah, you're an American thing. We don't want that." For me to show up, we're welcome. That sort of Canadian thing, MDA Space could show up in Europe right now and be a welcome European participant with a subsidiary, just as I could be a welcome subsidiary in the United States. It's actually kind of a unique dance that we get to play right now from a geopolitical perspective I think. Yep.
[The growth numbers ] that you put out are quite impressive. You talked about the same trend in the next two years and beyond. I'm wondering the kind of visibility you have and the confidence you have in achieving that, that comes from contracts that you've signed [audio distortion].
Yeah. Right now, last year we did CAD 1.1 billion in revenue, and this year we've gotten into CAD 1.6 billion. We have a CAD 5 billion backlog right now that will be the same or might be a bit up by the end of 2025. That backlog has typically got about a three-year horizon in it. If you're doing a billion and a bit and you got a three-year backlog that's CAD 5 billion or more, you're growing to execute that.
When I say we're going to grow 25% a year for the next three years, that's largely just backlog signed contract execution with a $20 billion pipeline over the next five behind it. Likely, I got more juice than that, but I'm a nice conservative guider to say this is what's going to happen. It's not like making stuff up. When we say 25% a year for the next three years, that's largely just backlog execution with a strong pipeline to back it up.
What about the cash flow evolution?
Cash flow evolution.
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Yeah. We've invested heavily the last few years. We've invested CAD 7,800 million over the last five years in the business. Now it's coming down. We had a big burst that came with the IPO. As we ejected ourselves out of our previous owner and were standing up by ourself, we saw the opportunity in front of us. We got three things we got to do for sure. We needed CHORUS. We need a commercial line of robotics, and we need a digital satellite.
And those are the things that are awesome. Our three brands, CHORUS, SKYMAKER, and AURORA is leading the market. We need a new headquarters and robotics manufacturing facility. Did it. We need to make this advanced manufacturing high-volume satellite facility, which is under construction now. That was our burst coming out of the gate. We are almost through that. We have been doing about CAD 200 million-CAD 240 million sort of a CapEx a year the last couple of years. This year will be the same. We think that'll drop down to maybe CAD 150 million in 2026, and then drop down to around CAD 100 million a year in 2027.
Our maintenance CapEx is around CAD 40 million-ish. Maintenance with a bit of growth, kind of cruising at that CAD 100 million a year CapEx, it seems to be the right thing. We do not have any major CapEx bumps coming that we can think of at the moment. We generate cash obviously from our EBITDA. We tend to convert EBITDA to operating cash at around 75%-85% conversion rate. We will be generating cash. We will be using some of it to be able to kind of do that CAD 150 million next year, CAD 100 million the year after. We are definitely paying attention to the market, which there is and be a little bit acquisitive here or there, to be able to keep expanding in the future.
People look to us to be a bit of a consolidator in space because we're a strong company. We're making money, a nd we're headquartered in Canada. The Canadian Government probably wouldn't let us be sold. They blocked the sale of us in 2008 through the Investment Canada Act. People know it's hard to just go and try to take on MDA Space. We're performing well. People come to us and say, "Hey, maybe we could join your party." We get a lot of requests. We get a lot of bid books. We'll be conservative on that. We would only buy things that are strong. We'd only buy things that are accretive to us. We'd only buy things that didn't get us in leverage trouble. Our leverage, kind of like sweet spot for us, is one and a half to two and a half.
We might go up to three times leverage to get through an acquisition, but within a year, get that back down into our target range. We are going to be prudent about this, but there are going to be opportunities for us as the global space market continues to expand moving forward. It says zero zero on the clock. I do not even know what time it is. Am I out of time?
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Okay, p erfect. I did it. Thanks a lot.
[audio distortion]. Thanks, Mike. With that, that ends the fireside chat and presentation portion of the conference today. Thank you, everyone, for coming out. I think today went really, really well. [audio distortion] thanks to all of you again for coming.