Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to EchoStar Corporation’s Conference Call for First Quarter 2022 Results. At this time, all attendees are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. Thank you. Now , I would like to welcome Mr. Terry Brown. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Earnings Call for the First Quarter of 2022. I'm joined today by Hamid Akhavan, our CEO and President, David Rayner, COO and CFO, Pradman Kaul, President of Hughes, Dean Manson, General Counsel and Secretary, and Ken Carroll, EVP of Corporate Development. As usual, we invite media to participate in a listen-only mode on the call and ask that you not identify participants or their firms in your report. We also do not allow audio recording, which we ask that you respect. Let me now turn the call over to Dean for the Safe Harbor disclosure.
Thank you, Terry. All statements we make during this call, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause our actual results to be materially different from historical results and from any future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. For a list of those factors and risks, please refer to our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, filed on February 23rd, and our subsequent filings made with the SEC.
All cautionary statements we make during the call should be understood as being applicable to any forward-looking statements we make wherever they appear. You should carefully consider the risks described in our reports and should not place any undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. We assume no responsibility for updating any forward-looking statements. I'll now turn the call over to Hamid.
Thank you, Dean, and good day, everyone. I am pleased to participate in my first EchoStar earnings call, and I look forward to interacting with many of you in the future. As some of you are aware, Anders Johnson, our Chief Strategy Officer and President of EchoStar Satellite Services, has decided to leave EchoStar to pursue other interests. We wish Anders great success in his new endeavors and would like to thank him for his tremendous contributions to our company over the past 11 years. Our agenda for the call today is to have our team provide a brief overview of the first quarter. Following the overview, I will make some general comments on the business and competitive environment. We'll then move to a question and answer session. Let me now turn this over to Prad.
Thank you, Hamid. Starting with North America, we continue to manage our U.S. Consumer Broadband sales and marketing efforts to optimize service to the existing subscriber base. The Hughes team has several initiatives underway to help maximize returns in the U.S. consumer segment. In Q1, we adjusted the HughesNet service plans, giving customers more data and increasing monthly fees. The new plans are being implemented across the U.S. base and are intended to provide a better customer experience at higher output. Another initiative in the consumer sector is an innovative product which combines GEO satellite and terrestrial LTE connectivity. This is a first of its kind consumer-grade hybrid GEO and LTE technology that creates a faster, more responsive internet experience. Plans are well underway to bring this technology to select markets this summer.
Our North American enterprise group signed a significant contract with a new retail customer to provide secure SD-WAN services at their 700 locations. We also closed upgrades and extensions with several customers in the pipeline industry. Our defense business received new orders from the U.S. Space Force and Navy. In the civilian government sector, we received an award from the Department of Veterans Affairs to continue to provide satellite services in support of its VA Knowledge Network, and an extension for the digital signage solution for the Social Security Administration's 1,900 offices. Activity at OneWeb remains robust and the team continues a very active deployment pace for the global gateways to support OneWeb's global service launch. We announced another distribution agreement with OneWeb, this time to deliver LEO services to the U.S. DOD.
At the SATELLITE 2022 trade show in March, our engineers demonstrated a revolutionary new electronically steered antenna for OneWeb's service. Focused on the government and enterprise market, the sleek new ESA has no moving parts and a very low profile, ideal for fixed and mobile connectivity. Let's talk a little bit about our international operations. The HughesNet offering in Latin America, like that in the U.S., continues to be capacity constrained in certain areas, while usage remains high. These markets are also being impacted by adverse economic conditions. In response, the team has adapted our strategy to pursue more high-value enterprise and government projects and community Wi-Fi sites. An example, during this quarter, the team won two new school projects in Latin America using JUPITER system equipment and capacity.
Five service providers in Mexico selected JUPITER equipment to connect more than 7,000 internet access and community Wi-Fi hotspots. We also crossed more than 2,300 active HughesXpress Wi-Fi sites. We announced a successful pilot of a community LTE project in Brazil, which uses GEO satellite backhaul to connect an LTE tower to the internet. All of these projects represent tangible progress on our plans to increase our yield on our Latin American capacity. The JUPITER 3 satellite continues to progress at Maxar. Maxar has provided an updated schedule, and we now expect to launch JUPITER 3 in the first quarter of 2023. This delay is due in part to reallocation of critical resources at Maxar to a higher priority government-related spacecraft project.
Although we're disappointed with this delay, we remain highly excited about JUPITER 3 as it will bring significant additional capacity to our markets, as well as the ability to offer high-speed service plans as demanded by our customers. All in all, I was very pleased with the execution during the quarter. Let me now turn the call over to Dave.
Thank you, Pradman. Good morning, everyone. Our revenue in the first quarter of 2022 remained strong and was higher compared to the same period last year and also higher compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. While the growth of our consumer broadband business has been impacted as a result of our capacity constraints and other factors, we have continued to increase revenue by capitalizing on enterprise and government opportunities, both domestically and internationally. However, this change in our revenue mix has and will continue to put some pressure on our margins. As Pradman mentioned, we have several initiatives in place to limit the impact of this change, and we will remain prudent in the efficient management of our business to protect our margins until we can monetize the additional capacity provided by the JUPITER 3 satellite.
Free cash flow, defined as adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx, was $54 million during the quarter, increasing $47 million from the same period last year. Our balance sheet remains one of the strongest in the industry, and we continue to seek opportunities to deploy cash for growth. In the first quarter of 2022, we bought back 1.5 million shares of our stock in the open market at a cost of $35 million. Let me now turn the call back over to Hamid.
Thank you, Dave. I want to begin by thanking my leadership team here at EchoStar and all of our more than 2,000 employees around the world, not just for a warm welcome to me as a newcomer, but for maintaining a solid track record of performance, as evidenced by today's results. As we all know, the satellite industry, and I would venture to say the broader telecom industry, where I have spent a great portion of my business life, is in the midst of its most rapid business and technological change in decades. We've seen the rise of competition as well as opportunities in every vertical market and in every region of the globe where EchoStar operates or serves customers.
I'm excited about the dynamic nature of our industry as I view our position to be on the winning side of the equations, given our strong resources, institutional heritage, and financial flexibility. I know that there are questions about our long-term growth strategy, which I'm not prepared to address today, but I would like to mention that my leadership team and I are in the midst of a fresh reassessment of our resources and opportunities and an examination of our industry and adjacent verticals with the goal to reignite and refine our corporate growth profile. Even based on a preliminary view of the situation, having been in my role just about a month today, I will assert that we are well positioned competitively. I say this for many reasons.
First, we have a uniquely strong balance sheet, something that most of our peers and competitors cannot say. I think the benefit of this strong balance sheet becomes more evident as interest rates rise and as the likelihood of a recessionary environment becomes meaningful. Secondly, we have a global presence and trusted reputation worldwide. Industry partners and customers want to work with our team. Government and enterprises alike would prefer working with a trusted partner during uncertain geopolitical developments as we are experiencing today. Third, we have a tremendous, and I would say unmatched, asset in our engineering capabilities. Finally, we have unique S-band spectrum assets that provide us strategic opportunities.
I'm excited about accelerating our momentum in that domain, and I wanna share a couple of high-level updates on initiatives we are focused on. For one, we are pleased that last month the wireless industry's main standard-setting association, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project or 3GPP, reached completion of its Release 17. Release 17 is the first to include non-terrestrial networks, or NTN, and to address satellite's role in the 5G global communication ecosystem. Satellite 5G specifications include direct access to handheld devices, enabling global service coverage. Because of its S-band spectrum assets, which are standardized in 3GPP, EchoStar is positioned to become a leading global operator of 5G mobile satellite services, addressing direct-to-device mobility and IoT applications.
The other update is that EchoStar Mobile, our E.U. licensee, has begun pre-commercial testing of its satellite-based LoRa IoT service. EchoStar Mobile solution is the first real-time bi-directional LoRa satellite service with mobile and remote capabilities, and we expect it to transform the global satellite IoT market with new, very low-cost services and enhanced LPWAN capabilities. Now, among the many countering challenges and opportunities shaping this industry, we can be happy about one key fact. We are one of the few companies with significant ability to chart our future independent of what other players in our industry may choose to do. I believe any solid and defensible growth strategy requires careful thinking, analysis, and planning to be sure the long-term risk/reward equation is asymmetrically favorable.
While we will take investment leaps, both organically and via acquisitions, the core business, the financial stability, and independence will never be jeopardized. I hope to participate in investor events post our second quarter of 2022 earnings call, and to share more about the specifics of our strategic direction over the coming quarters. Let me now turn it over to the operator to start the Q&A session.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question is from the line of Chris Quilty from Quilty Analytics. Your line's now open.
Hi, Hamid, and welcome aboard. Question to start on the Hughes business and specifically around some of the new pricing initiatives. When was that implemented, and does it still leave your general pricing strategy in alignment with other competitors in the market, or are you now pricing at more of a premium?
Well, we implemented it, I think, beginning in February of this year. We're beginning to see the impact. Some of the Q1 results clearly showed the hierarchical impact of this price increase. That's going well. Now, in terms of competitiveness, it's fairly in the same range as our primary competitor, and obviously a lot lower than the Starlink offerings that are in the market today.
Understand. I know that, whatever, we have about a year for the satellite to come online. How and when do you begin to change the pricing plans to reflect the different types of service packages that will be offered with the JUPITER 3 satellite?
It's a little premature to talk about the plans that we will have with JUPITER 3, but clearly we intend to give more bits to the customer. We intend to give higher speeds to the customer. I think with the additional value that the customer gets, it should position us very strongly to be competitive in that market.
Great. Just overall on the Hughes business, you've had some really strong equipment sales. I assume the majority of that year-over-year lift is due to OneWeb gateways. How should we look at the equipment revenue out through the balance of the year? Is that activity starting to fall off?
No. In fact, it's getting stronger. Our new order input during Q1 was very good. Our backlog in that equipment business is high. I would expect that's going to be a strong part of our performance during the rest of this year.
Great. You didn't talk about the Bharti. Well, I guess it's Hughes Communications India, if I got the name right, the new Bharti JV. What is the plan there , going forward now that’s official and final? Are there any major changes in strategy that you've?
Yeah. That's an exciting part.
All right.
I think of our international business. As you know, we own 65% of that joint venture, and Bharti Airtel owns the remaining 35%. We've already started working together to come up with strategies to provide things like, you know, backhaul, cellular backhaul. Bharti Airtel, as you know, is one of the two leading cellular service providers in India. With over 400 million subscribers. We expect that as 4G and 5G gets implemented in India, Bharti is going to have a lot of requirements for selling the backhaul to connect the new base stations with each other.
That business, most of it should come to this JV, and we expect that to be a major part of our growth in India over the next few years. We also continue to supply equipment to Reliance Jio, which is the other major cellular company in India, and we hope to continue to grow that element of our business too.
Are there any near-term capacity concerns in the Indian market?
No, I don't think so. I don't think we have any concerns right now. I think the general tenor of the market in India, which was being run, unfortunately, which was highly regulated, has started changing. There's been major changes that the government has announced, where they will create an organization very similar to the FCC called IN-SPACe. I think that'll loosen up the regulatory issues a little bit. It's not gonna solve it all instantly, but I expect that there'll be some nice advances in our business in that area.
Got it. Final question on the ESA or flat panel antenna you announced. Can you give us a little bit of history there on the design of that product? I know in the past you had partnered with Gilat and others on flat panels. What was the size, scale, scope, expense of that project? Second question is, where do you expect it to be positioned in terms of price competitiveness with other antennas on the market? Is this solely intended for OneWeb, or would you be willing to sell that to other parties?
No, we certainly will sell it to anybody in the market. There's no exclusive, exclusivity in our agreement with OneWeb. OneWeb is obviously going to be, because they have a Ku-band LEO, a major customer and also a major user of the CSA. The original effort that we had done with Gilat didn't really succeed very much, so we have not pursued that anymore. This ESA is totally developed at Hughes. All the elements are being manufactured initially at our Hughes factories, and we're very excited and our potential customers are very excited too, because it's a revolutionary new technology, no moving parts, very low profile, making it ideal for mobility and aeronautical applications.
That brings up a question. If you designed it to the sort of aviation standards, then this is clearly not intended to be a product that could in any way serve the consumer markets, and the consumer.
Yeah, no. You're absolutely right. It's clearly designed for the mobility markets, aeronautical being a big element of it, and high-end government markets and also the enterprise, high-end enterprise markets.
Very good. Thank you, everybody.
Your next question is from the line of Ric Prentiss from Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Good morning, everybody.
Morning.
Hey, wanna ask a couple questions. Sorry, busy earnings day, back-to-back earnings calls. Wanted to ask Hamid a couple of questions. First, apologize if this was asked or addressed, what specifically attracted you to the opportunity at EchoStar, as far as what you see in your first 30 days, what have you learned so far about where some of the growth vectors might be?
Thank you, Rick, for the question. There were many factors that attracted me to EchoStar and Hughes family. First, I was familiar with part of the company. I had been a customer of Hughes some 25 years ago, when I was part of a very high-profile company, and Hughes was a technology and product supplier, and I was incredibly impressed by the capabilities of the company in terms of innovation, bringing solid technology. I mean, technology is at the heart, innovation at the heart. I believe one of the best opportunities in today's market and going forward is to bring disruptive technologies and great technical services to market.
I think, the foundation here is extremely solid, and I was familiar with it and, in fact, familiar with many of the players, including Pradman here, sitting next to me. Other than that, I came from a private equity background. At least for the past five or six years of my life, I have been very, very actively involved in technology investments and TMT investments. When I look at the balance sheet here, I recognize that there's a significant opportunity for exposing value in the business that has been undervalued. Now, I don't wanna set a high expectation that you will see something happen in a rush. I was never and I will never be a rash investor. I will never be a speculative investor.
I'd like to use our best understanding of the environment, the dynamics of the market which we have been serving for decades, to use our balance sheet, but we will be more active in terms of using our cash and our abilities to expand our business using our resources. As I mentioned in my earlier comments, I think the market is heading in a direction where opportunities will be cheaper and better to acquire, and I look forward to using our resources even more optimally as that happens. Long answer to your short question, but I thought that probably will cover three or four follow-on questions, Ric Prentiss.
Exactly. Kinda open the door to potential acquisitions. What is it that Hughes/EchoStar really needs? Is it new regions? Is it new customer bases? Is it new technologies? Just kind of as you think of kind of a SWOT analysis, you know, what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that you look at and that you see having a battleship balance sheet to put to work that might be on a very high level, something of interest?
Certainly it's not technology. I think we have plenty of technology in-house. I'm not expecting or looking. It might happen in adjacencies, but in terms of how much technical power we have in-house, I think we have plenty to harvest, so that's probably not a shortfall in any way. If there are areas where we should be focusing on is how do we take these technologies into market, new markets, adjacent markets, how can we gain a scale where perhaps organically it might take too long, can we accelerate in some of the areas where we have capabilities through acquisitions.
Those are routes to market and products to market to me would be the focus area rather than innovating new technology, which we have plenty of in-house and we can do, I guess at will. It's not an inhibitor of our growth.
Okay. Another one for me is a lot of times when new executives come into a company, their compensation package talks a lot about what the important metrics are. Can you share with us a little bit about if you've got some accomplishment goals that are tied to, say, revenues or EBITDA or free cash flow or return on capital? Kinda where is your incentive at and what metrics are you gonna be looking at from a personal selfish standpoint of, "Hey, I wanna make sure we do well here 'cause it will serve me well and hopefully serve the shareholders well as also.
Right. I would say, I mean, at the moment, obviously, the compensation packages are what they have been and published, and there's no plan to change that in at least the course of this year, for sure. I think the way I think about this as being most effective is we are in the middle of our strategic evaluations and thinking, and it's gonna take us a few months to, you know, get to a platform where we feel it's the fair space, let's call it. That would be the foundation for our compensation plans for the following year.
I think, we're just in time in terms of doing that work in preparation for incentive systems that would, you know, promote progress in the directions we wanna go. This is probably a good discussion to have towards the end of the year where we are a little bit more, I guess, orchestrated and organized around our strategic directions. Now, I don't wanna say that we don't have a strategic direction. We certainly will utilize what we have, and there's great plans around JUPITER 3. There are great plans around expansion of our products that you heard Pradman offer towards OneWeb and towards other government sectors. You know, there is significant amount of strategic work that has been done and we are executing on.
The job is to accelerate that. I think we could do this in hopefully on our S-band area and certainly in the directions as we have seen progress already. We just wanna double down. This would be more of an acceleration rather than completely back to a blank sheet of paper, which certainly is not necessary here.
Great. Thanks. I'll let some others ask some questions and come back in if there's time. Thank you. Welcome to the space, Hamid.
Thank you.
Your next question is from the line of Caleb Henry from Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.
Hey, everyone. Just two or three questions from me. The first is on the flat panel antenna that was discussed earlier. Is that already something that EchoStar is selling and shipping, or is that still in development? If so, when is its release date?
It's still in development. We've built the prototype and done some prototype demonstrations, you know, with the first few units. We should be in production early next year.
Okay. What's your target price range for that?
I don't think we're discussing our price strategy at this stage. We'll obviously see what the market is like for the different applications. I don't think we're ready yet. What I can tell you, though, is if you just look at the bill of materials, it should be very competitive with other units that we've seen in the market so far.
Okay. Pradman, while I have you, is there any plan to procure? I know in the past, EchoStar has leased capacity from other operators when kind of capacity constrained. Do you anticipate any more capacity leases between now and JUPITER 3?
You know, we're constantly looking at that, and people who have excess capacity, especially over in North America, are talking to us. Unfortunately, we haven't yet seen an economically compelling deal from any of those guys. If we can come up with one, I'm sure we would evaluate that and, because it's the only help our business. The economics are tough, and it has to make sense economically.
My last question, regarding S-band and some of the progress with 3GPP. I'm just wondering if that gives any clarity to EchoStar, regarding your LEO constellation. I think there's the one IoT EchoStar XXI in orbit. Have any of the plans been fleshed out for what that future system will look like?
It's a bit too early for us to answer that, but I can certainly say that, you know, the developments on 3GPP and the 5G inclusion for satellites in that standard opens up, clearly a few angles and routes to to monetizing our spectrum assets, which we are deeply analyzing and looking at. Certainly this was not in news to us that, you know, happened yesterday. We've been part of that activity ourselves and been very supportive of that, with the view that it would be helpful in terms of bringing satellite connectivity to pockets which is, you know, they're already there. We are excited about it.
You know, there's still quite a bit of work to be done, not just by us, but also the rest of the industry trying to figure out the technology, build and commercialization of that. But from a framework of the opportunity, I think the clarity is there, and then we understand that this will happen and we, in one form or fashion, will participate in that. The question is exactly what, and please allow us a quarter or so, maybe two, for us to kind of shape that and share that with you in more detail.
Okay. That's all my questions. Thank you, guys, and welcome to the industry, Hamid.
Thank you.
Your next question is from the line of Nitin Sacheti from Papyrus Capital. Your line is now open.
Hi, guys. Hope you're doing well. Just quickly, could you maybe give us a sense of, given the delays in JUPITER 3, maybe the cadence of CapEx over the next year? Maybe just talk through, just given where the stock is, just talk through some of what you mentioned earlier, Hamid, on kind of new capital projects and sort of what the hurdle is there versus continuing to sort of aggressively buy back stock. The second question is really, I know we've talked about this in the past, but anything you can tell us around JUPITER 3 and sort of enterprise or wholesale opportunities, whether it's mobile backhaul or anything else, that could sort of come on quickly versus just a ramping of consumer subscribers.
Let me address the first part of that. This is Dave Rayner. From a CapEx standpoint, I would expect CapEx to be somewhat below where we were in 2021, so probably in the $400 million range. A significant portion of that is continuing to go into CPE for consumers. And that will, on a per customer basis, probably start ticking up in the second half of the year as we start deploying a new generation of modem in anticipation of J3. But we also, as you correctly point out, will have final payments on J3 as well as launch and other ground infrastructure that'll be completed this year. I'll let Hamid and Pradman address the rest of the question.
Maybe I can comment on the hurdle rate. In terms of an investment hurdle rate, I'm not anticipating that we would have a very specific target because part of that is a function of the market. What I did mention earlier that I believe we might do even better in terms of our opportunities in a market, in a more down market or recessionary market. I'm not looking forward to that from a personal perspective, and I hope that from an economic growth perspective of the market, I hope that is not a long lasting, you know, anything.
If it turns out that the market is heading toward softening, and we have seen the tech sector and adjacent sectors to us are becoming a little cheaper. You have seen the valuations come down to more historical levels as opposed to just recent times that have been a bit overinflated. I think that the market is heading our way, let's put it that way. Will we, buying our own shares versus the acquisitions? Well, certainly, our desire is that we shift it toward acquisitions from outside and growth of existing customer base. We always have the option of coming back and making sure that our picking up our own shares if we think they are significantly undervalued.
You will see us hopefully more active. Again, I don't wanna set expectation that after 90 days me being in the job, the market has changed so much or I changed the company so much that that would be a little too exuberant and too rash. You can certainly accept that the focus is very high on making sure we utilize our resources most efficiently.
Was there another piece of this question, if you don't mind repeating that, please?
Oh, yeah, of course. I follow. It's just around enterprise opportunities or wholesale opportunities for JUPITER 3 early on since we're only now a year away versus sort of the consumer ramp that we saw, consumer subscriber ramp we saw with JUPITER 1 and 2.
Yeah, sure. I think clearly the two major new applications we see in the enterprise sector is the cellular backhaul and the community Wi-Fi. Both of them use the fact that we can increase the productivity use of our bandwidth and get a higher you know price for every hertz of bandwidth that we have in these two satellites. That's probably the primary difference. We will obviously continue to serve the enterprise market and continue to serve the defense markets and then add on these two other markets to it.
Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Your next question is from the line of Ric Prentiss from Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Hey, thanks. Appreciate some follow-ups. Want to ask, obviously, Anders, it was announced that he's resigning effective in about four weeks or so from now. Can you walk us through a little bit about how you see that playing out in the ESS and the S-band work? How deep is the bench, and what does it mean as far as our thoughts on what Anders leaving means to that segment and the potential growth?
Right. Well, first of all, I wanna thank Anders for his great contributions to the company the past 11 years. He leaves a great legacy here, and he also leaves a great team behind. We have a very deep bench in-house, in that area. I personally have interest in being involved, in every aspect of, you know, developing that practice. I do have, as I mentioned, some technical background myself. I started my career as a telemetry engineer in S-band for a NASA satellite. The love of S-band has always been in my heart. I guess a long way of saying I don't think you should see us as having lost or losing, critical resources.
Anders was incredible in terms of his leadership, but we will rally around our team here and I'll, you know, contribute my own personal attention to it to make sure that nothing gets reduced there. If anything, we are shifting more resources there in order to make sure we are keeping up with the opportunity that is every day getting better in that space. Please don't read anything to it in terms of negative aspects, other than we have a very good team and that team is interfacing with me directly at the top level of the business.
We saw some press releases fairly recently about DISH, sister company DISH and EchoStar/Hughes working on a Department of Defense contract jointly. Can you share with us a little bit of details of what kind of partnerships are of interest between the sisters of DISH and EchoStar/Hughes that might pan out over the coming next few years?
Yeah. Clearly, this is a very exciting part of new opportunities in our business, and we are working with EchoStar Hughes being prime and DISH being the subcontractor along with other people. It's the naval base where we are providing a 5G network at the base. It's gonna be interesting to see how that element of our business grows because it's a new area for us to enter. The work has just started, and hopefully we'll try to take it to the next step over the next few months.
Speaking of DISH, many of us will be attending their first Analyst Investor Day in gosh, almost 20 years as a major analyst day at DISH. Certainly one of the investor thoughts on both DISH and EchoStar is not much communication with the Street. Hamid, as you come in, hopefully we're looking forward to a lot more communication as you get longer in the seat there. How do you think about communicating with the Street? I'll throw one more out there as well. As an underfollowed stock, there's a lot of gaps in knowledge. Any thoughts about even high level guidance targets or growth targets? Was on two other earnings calls this morning where companies were updating their guidance or talking about their guidance.
Any philosophical problems with providing at least aspirational targets or kind of longer term targets? Because as an underfollowed stock, it certainly causes people to have a lot more concern or questions.
I appreciate the question, but it would be imprudent, and you should not rely on it if I gave you any guidance after 30 days in the job. If I gave it to you.
I don't want any guidance. I'm saying is it something you consider doing? Yeah.
Yeah. Certainly, if I say anything right now, it would not have a solid foundation, and you would not trust it anyway. Please allow me to have a bit more understanding of the business. Look, I will obviously never make a comment on DISH regardless. That's a different public company that we have an arm's length relationship with. I think we do have connection at the Chairman level, but honestly, that's just about it. The rest of it is business as we would do with any other company. I like DISH from a perspective that they're doing innovative things in their space. They're building new things and they're bringing new technologies to market.
Some of those things are hopefully relevant even for us, like some of the Open RAN and some of the things they're doing, which ultimately on a 3GPP basis and deployment basis is also applicable to our business here at EchoStar. I think I see a lot of synergies in terms of their innovation and what they're bringing to market and what we hope to bring to market. I think that's just about it. I certainly cannot give you any guidance or change any guidance today. Let's revisit this question again in a you know, quarter or two where I am more comfortable sharing.
Sure. Makes sense. I guess the other piece of that question was just related to DISH is finally opening the kimono and sharing with Analyst Day, Investor Day, what kind of their plans are and what their vision is. As you look at JUPITER 3 on the schedule now for first quarter 2023, the S-band hopefully getting more clarity on that, do you see in the future a possibility of EchoStar maybe even hosting an Analyst Day to kinda get people up to speed on what JUPITER 3 is and what S-band really are just to kinda help people kick the tires and understand where you're headed? Again, not in the next day or two, or even maybe the next quarter or two, but is it something philosophically that would be interesting?
Certainly, one of the things we like to do, I would like to do, is to have more interaction with the market. I think one of the things that we can benefit from is, being more interactive with you, being more communicative. I believe we have, just by if you just look at our balance sheet, if you look at the structure of our company, I think we have more valuable information and assets and products to, you know, expose to you. It is my intent that we increase our interaction with you.
As I mentioned, in my earlier standard comment was that I need a quarter or two for us to be sure that when we take your time and we share something with you, it's valuable and you can rely on it. We are heading in the direction of being more communicative and more interactive with you and more open with respect to our opportunities.
Great. Appreciate it, and, I'll see if there's some more questions. Thanks, guys. Stay well.
There are no further questions. Presenters, please continue.
Okay. I think we wanna thank everybody for joining the call today, and we wanna. With that, we wanna go ahead and conclude the meeting. We'll look forward to talking to you next quarter.
Thank you, everyone. See you soon.
With that, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.