Welcome to Viasat's fiscal year 2023 first quarter earnings conference call. Your host for today's call is Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Dankberg.
Okay, thanks. Thanks for joining us today. We released our shareholder letter shortly after the market closed today, and it's available on our website. We will be referring to it on the call. Joining me on the call today are Rick Baldridge, who's our Vice Chairman now, Kevin Harkenrider, our Chief Operating Officer, Shawn Duffy, our Chief Financial Officer, Robert Blair, our General Counsel, Paul Froelich, Corporate Development, and Peter Lopez in Investor Relations. I'll have Robert provide our safe harbor first.
Thanks, Mark. As you know, this discussion will contain forward-looking statements. This is a reminder that factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Additional information concerning these factors is contained in our SEC filings, including our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Copies are available from the SEC or from our website. Back to you, Mark.
Okay, thanks. Our results for the first quarter were consistent with the output that we described in our fiscal year 2022 fourth quarter year-end call in May. Several factors, including seasonality, delays in certifying some of the new information security products, and some transient supply chain issues affected our sequential top line. An improved revenue mix across our service networks and lower R&D spend in the quarter heavily offset the lower revenue, as well as our growing ViaSat-3 ground infrastructure operating expenses that are in preparation for this fall's launch, so collectively resulting in only a slight sequential decline in adjusted EBITDA. It's worth noting that consolidated service revenue and Satellite Services segment revenue both achieved new records in the quarter, partially offset by the impact of product revenue from some of the factors I just described.
We expect our first quarter EBITDA to be the low point of the fiscal year, with good sequential growth from here throughout fiscal year 2023, driven largely by scheduled in-flight connectivity installations and activations, significant government backlog, and strong Government Systems orders in the first quarter and also so far in the second quarter. We're expecting that we'll grow our fleet of active in-flight aircraft by about 500 over the remainder of this fiscal year on both new and retrofit aircraft for both new and existing customers. ViaSat-3 program's making good progress as the first satellite enters final assembly and mechanical environmental testing, and the second payload is now at Boeing for spacecraft integration. Launch and in-service schedule targets for the first flight have been holding from last quarter.
We also wanted to add a little color on the point in the letter regarding the $62 million payment we collected just after the close of the first quarter from Acacia Communications. The payment is for Acacia's use of our intellectual property, and it includes contractual and statutory interest. We had previously won a jury verdict ordering Acacia to pay for its use of our technology and had subsequently obtained verdict insurance at an economical premium so that we could be certain of the payments, and that was prior to ultimately also winning an appellate court decision that upheld that verdict. While we didn't expect to receive the payment quite this soon, it was factored into our outlook for the year.
In addition, the funds will help offset the pre-launch year-over-year ground infrastructure expenses that lead up to the ViaSat-3 launch and support additional discretionary investments in the significant growth opportunities we're targeting in both the fixed and mobile business areas. With that as a little bit of background, we'll open it up to questions.
At this time, if you would like to ask your questions, simply press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, star one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will now take the first question from the line of Landon Park with Morgan Stanley.
Great. Thanks very much for taking the questions. Good afternoon, everyone.
Good afternoon.
I'm wondering if we can start on the Government side of the business. There's obviously been some press releases about, or sorry, not press releases, news reports about, you know, potential strategic options for part of that business. I'm just wondering if you can update us on your views there in terms of, you know, willingness to part with portions of that business. Maybe also just provide some disclosure around, you know, what is the right way to think about the size of the major pieces of that business and, you know, if there's any margin differentials within the different parts of that business. I'll start with that and then I just have one follow-up.
First, we don't comment on speculation or rumors about, you know, what we may or may not do around the business. I can give you the answers to the other parts of your question that are, you know, around what the makeup of the business is, and there's roughly kind of three main components to it. One is tactical data links, and that's primarily business around what's called the Link 16. That's been a long time and steadily growing part of the business. You know, think of it as in the range of maybe a third of that business, of the total government business. There's another piece which is information security-based and cybersecurity-based. That's a little less than a third of the business.
Then there's one more piece which is satellite-oriented, and that includes both technology products that we sell and Satellite Services. You know, the kind of the fastest-growing part of the business has been the Satellite Services business that has the, kind of the most synergy with the rest of our Satellite Services business.
Thanks.
That kind of describes the landscape there.
Are there any margin differentials between the different portions of the business that you would highlight?
You know, in general, the services businesses tend to have the highest margins. The businesses as a whole, it's not enormously disparate in terms of the margin characteristics of those businesses.
Okay. And I understand that you don't wanna comment on press reports, but maybe can you just refresh us on your strategic view in terms of, you know, how you think about, you know, potential optionality for that business and, you know, your willingness to surface value if you don't feel like, you know, I don't know if you think you're getting full credit for the value of that business today. You know, how are you thinking about that?
Well, the main way we tend to think about all of our businesses is really in the way that they provide synergy with each other. We don't really like having just a collection of disparate businesses. So far, you know, that's paid off well for us. You know, clearly, of the defense businesses, the one that's probably got the greatest amount of synergy with the overall direction of the company is the satellite part and the Satellite Services part.
The main thing, you know, that I think that we've done well in order to grow as we have over a long period of time, is, you know, we've been pretty good at being able to determine the relative growth opportunities of our different areas and then, you know, put the most emphasis on those with the greatest amount of growth. That's. I think if you wanna think about how we think strategically and how that drives the tactics, that's probably the underlying, you know, the most fundamental underlying factor in the way we deal with our businesses.
How would you say that the encryption portion of the business figures into the long-term strategic, you know, view that you have for the company as a whole?
Well, just on the encryption part, you know, what we've tended to think about is encryption as an overall component of cybersecurity. There, you know, there's a lot evolving in the cybersecurity space, in the cybersecurity segment. You know, what we believe is there's going to be more and more, you know, spillover on the cybersecurity side into commercial markets. That, you know, that's an example of one of the areas where, you know, we're looking at synergies. You know, the way I guess the way I'd put it is we wouldn't have the collection of businesses that we do if we didn't see synergy opportunities across them.
The only thing I would say is that the degree of significance may vary over time and with circumstances, and we'll tend to respond to that. You know, and sometimes it's not so much that there's less opportunity in a given area. Sometimes there's just way more opportunity in other areas. I think those are the things that we've done a good job of managing. You know, that's what we're constantly trying to assess, I would say.
Okay. That's all very helpful, Mark. Just one last one for me, just switching gears to Inmarsat. I might have missed it in the release, but can you give us your latest, you know, timeline in terms of closing expectations and just maybe how you're thinking about the EU review that was recently announced, along with the other CMA and DOJ, you know, reviews that are ongoing?
Okay. Well, so I think we've made pretty steady progress in achieving the milestones that we you know that we had before us based on the actions and activities that we need to do. You know, we're entering into a period where now we need some responses from the government, that they need to draw some conclusions or inferences from that. We have a little bit less control over that. You know, overall, our target is still. We haven't learned anything that would say that we should deviate from the target that we had. Basically, you know, we still have to wait. We'll get more information over the next few months, and so we're gonna have to factor that in. For right now, we're still aiming kind of for where we were, probably more.
You know, I think we're closing in on nine months, so it's probably gonna be more biased towards the back end of that than it would be towards the front end.
Well, the prior ideal was to close by the end of calendar year. Is that still, you know, within the realm of possibilities?
That's a way to put it. It's within the realm of possibility. Yes, it's within the realm of possibility. Now, we, you know, it's hard for us to anticipate, especially on the regulatory side, how the responses will come back from the agencies given the information that we provided. We'll, you know, we will get a lot more information over the next two or three months. It's possible that we could still close by the end of the year. It's possible that it'll extend out to the 18 months or, you know, it's conceivable it could go beyond. We just will learn a lot more over the next few weeks to a month or two.
The EU review, was that expected and anticipated or was there any surprise in that?
It was expected, because, you know, the most of the activity that we have in these sectors, it's, you know, it covers both the EU and the U.K. That's not surprising.
Great. Well, thanks very much for taking the questions.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Philip Cusick with JPMorgan Chase.
Philip, you're on mute if you were trying to talk. Maybe we should take a question from somebody else and come back to Philip.
The next question comes from Chris Quilty with Quilty Analytics.
Thanks, Mark. I wanted to follow up. I think you said you expect to add about 500 aircraft, or 500 incremental orders going into the year. How much visibility do you have into that number, and does that include Southwest orders?
Yeah. Yes, the 500 includes, you know, as I mentioned, it includes both new planes and retrofits for both new and existing customers, and that would include. You know, with Southwest in particular, we have new aircraft that we'll deliver equipment to that will be line fit. They'll take them as new. You know, we have. You know, I think that's a pretty reasonable target. There are, you know, factors that could drive it up or down from there, but that's kind of a pretty reasonable estimate.
Gotcha. You know, given there's you know, capacity shortages internationally and here in the U.S., it's a pretty saturated market in terms of airlines that have already picked solutions, though we're seeing some switching. When can you reasonably start to target more international airlines, you know, given the timing of the you know, your second satellite coming online?
First of all, you know, roughly ballpark, it's probably 30,000-ish aircraft. That's kind of a rough estimate of aircraft. Probably all in, you know, we're in the 15%-20% penetration of existing aircraft, and that's people think that's going to 40,000-ish aircraft kind of by the mid- to late thirties. You know, we think there's still a lot of growth in the market as a whole. You know, we've been mostly most successful in the U.S. market and in some international traffic to and from the U.S. That's, you know, that's where most of the installs are coming in this current fiscal year.
We've done well on international in the places where we have coverage, and that's really been the main factor in determining our success. You know, recently we've announced more transatlantic international. I think that airlines are looking at the deployment on ViaSat-3. They see the progress that we're making, and I think that, you know, that's really what'll. I think it's two factors. Factor one is getting the coverage on the international basis. In the places where we've had international coverage, we've done well. The other one is that airlines, you know, tend to see in-flight connectivity as a competitive, you know, it's a c ompetitive differentiator.
Yeah. That's a good word for it. So in the U.S., where it's most prevalent, that's. It's really been a bigger competitive factor. I think that's kind of been a factor on the major long-haul international airlines, intercontinental flights. I think there's still a lot of opportunity among more regional airlines, and that'll become more and more a factor as you see the penetration grow. I think those are the things that we've got our eye on as the overall penetration in the commercial in-flight market expands.
Do you have or will you have an antenna product for those regional aircraft?
Short answer is yes. Okay. I think that the airline's views of what the purpose is for outfitting regional aircraft is evolving. As they see, you know, having in-flight connectivity as sort of an integral product to their entire fleet and all their services, including on connecting flights and on these shorter flights. I think that their view of what's needed is evolving, and I think we'll be well equipped to deal with that. There are, you know. I'd say we're seeing more interest in outfitting regional jets with, in a more expansive view of what that means too as well.
Like, the view of how you outfit regional jets kind of going forward is probably different than the way you might have looked at it 2 or 3 or 4 years ago.
Great. If I can, one final question. Last week, EchoStar talked about losing subs directly to Starlink, in part because of latency, and they're introducing a hybrid cellular-satellite solution to try to address that. Of course, we also had the acquisition announcement with Eutelsat and OneWeb, and again, in part, you know, Eutelsat trying to get a latency solution. Do you still feel that a GEO-only solution for consumer or IFC markets is sufficient, or are you seeing an increasing need to do something to address latency?
I think our view hasn't really changed that much. I would say it's one of the unique things about satellite is we do think that there's a little bit of a trade-off between bandwidth and speed on the one hand and latency on the other. That we think that we can manufacture bandwidth really efficiently from GEO and aim it into places where there's demand and have the flexibility to move it around with that demand, especially in mobility. The farther out you go from Earth, the longer the latency is. There's this trade-off where you just have to hit the right mix for each particular vertical market segment.
One of the things we've said is we think that hybrid solutions are, you know, are a good way to deal with that trade-off. That we can mix in lower latency options, whether those be satellite or terrestrial options, wired or wireless, for terrestrial options, to you know try to hit the sweet spot of each of the vertical markets in the geographic areas that we're trying to serve. We've done work on that. Right now, what we think is, especially with just the booming growth in streaming and more and more video entertainment hours switching from broadcast to streaming. You know, I think that's a lot of what we see is going on, and satellite industry is kind of a big pivot to being able to support data.
Some of that's gonna be through high throughput you know, high capacity or high throughput GEO satellites. Some of them might be, you know, from the latency perspective on MEO or LEO. What we've been really focused on is that bandwidth component. We think that streaming is really driving substantial growth and demand. That's kind of 30-ish% year-over-year on a per-subscriber basis. We're really focused on being able to address that. We think that, you know, we'd like to be able to address low latency, as kind of the next thing, next most important thing behind that. The other thing that we've been really interested in is hybrid solutions, including multi-orbit. We've been working with several non-geosynchronous operators or prospective operators in order to be able to do that.
We don't think that we necessarily need to own a non-geosynchronous constellation in order to be able to do hybrid solutions, you know, hybrid multi-orbit solutions. I do think that just to elaborate a little bit more, you know, there's some sense that, well, only the geosynchronous operators are saying that multi-orbit makes sense, but the non-geosynchronous operators don't seem to think that there's a need for GEO at all, that non-geosynchronous is just gonna obsolete geosynchronous. One of the things that's interesting about the OneWeb and Eutelsat deal is that you've got a non-geosynchronous operator saying multi-orbit is the right answer. You've also, you know, and that's kinda not. I mean, this might be the first, most explicit case of that. You've also got SES that's investing in both MEO and GEO satellites. You've got Telesat.
That's a significant GEO operator that's also doing multi-orbit. What we think is, you know, that it just is indicative that multi-orbit makes sense from either direction. That's kinda how we see it as well. I think that the other point, just to OneWeb and Eutelsat, that deal sort of highlights is one of the things that we've been looking at when we try to do this, is to get as much commonality in the network infrastructure as we can. For instance, in choosing to acquire Inmarsat, one of the good things is their broadband network is Ka-band, just like ours is.
Especially in the mobility space, where you know you've already got a need for tracking antennas, you can use phased array antennas is one of the things we've been working on and demonstrated there as well. It's a lot simpler to do them in the same operating bands as opposed to doing it in two different bands. That's an example of one of the things that we're looking to do when we do hybrids between GEO and non-GEO, is try to get some of those same cost efficiencies and the ability to work with the infrastructure from both sides in a more you know in a simpler, more unified way. That's those are kind of the main things that we've been thinking of. Things are still evolving in the space.
We still are interested in multi-orbit to the extent, and again, I wanna emphasize this, to the extent that our customers are, and that it delivers more value to them and to their users.
Great. Thanks for the detailed answer.
Welcome.
Your next question comes from the line of Ric Prentiss with Raymond James.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone.
Hey, Ric.
Hey. A couple questions. One, housekeeping one on the legal settlement. The $62 million, I assume that was a revenue. It sounded like you might have done some kind of payment to lock it in. What should we think the EBITDA effect of that legal settlement was?
Hey, Ric. This is Shawn. Yeah, you're right. A good amount of it is gonna come in the revenue line, but we do have some costs that are gonna offset that, some of the insurance costs and some legal costs. I would think of it as probably net around $50-ish. That should be EBITDA contributing.
In the second quarter.
In the second quarter.
The second, yeah. Second quarter.
Yeah, second quarter.
Yeah. I'm reading.
Let me just a little bit will go into interest income as well.
Sure. Okay. Mark, kind of strategic thinking, we saw that the FCC voted 4-0 recently to have an effort on reviewing, quote, "the space race." What do you think the FCC is looking to do, and what would you like to see the outcome of that be? I have one final follow-up.
Well, you know, I think that on the one hand, I think that the FCC is anticipating that, hey, the options of doing things in space are increasing. I think that what they've said, and what would make sense, is to try to get ahead of that, to try to think about what regulations that they may have that could turn out to inhibit that or possibly be bottlenecks, and then try to address those in the context of preserving access to space. That's a good thing. I think that's wise. You know, we're interested in some elements of, you know, structures in space that are really interesting for the kinds of things that we do. We think it's good to be considering that.
I think that, you know, when you ask what I would like to see, I think that a lot of the risk in space comes from very large numbers of relatively large spacecraft that represent a lot of mass, a lot of cross-sectional area, and that is really being dominated by these large mega constellations that are really communications-oriented. It's very difficult to see that the... When you think about this notion that academics and other researchers and quite a few organizations are orienting around, which is the notion of carrying capacity. Which is, you know, how much stuff in space is sustainable? How much is too much? How do you measure that? That's really likely to be driven by these mega constellations.
What we'd like to see is that they don't look past the issue with the mega constellations to focus on something that's probably not likely to represent as much of a risk to congestion in the space environment as some of the issues that we're already dealing with.
Okay. One more follow-up on the government side. Help us understand on the tactical Link 16 side, what kind of synergies are you looking at there? What kind of opportunities between the different business cycles do the tactical Link 16 kind of offer?
Well, one of the biggest long-term themes in defense communications and actually in sort of overall intelligence and battle management is. There are different names for it, but one of the main names is what we call JADC2 or Joint All-Domain Command and Control or Joint Communications. What that is intended to do is to synthesize a number of disparate communications links and intelligence sources into a seamless, comprehensible whole. When you think about that, there are definitely things that you can do with terrestrial networks, Link 16 being an important one for that, in the way you combine that with space.
That's one of the avenues that we've been looking at because we're familiar with both the space and the terrestrial parts of that. I think we have quite a bit to contribute to that, and we've been pretty successful in participating in it. One of the other areas that's got significant synergy opportunities is the notion of Link 16 from space. You know, that's one of the areas that we've been pretty successful in as well. As well, the notion where we think of space as a relay, there's other applications for space relay that we've been successful with as well. There's definitely synergy opportunities there.
I think just to go back to what I said before in response to Landon's question, really the issue for us is just trying to assess all those different synergy opportunities, which ones have the greatest growth opportunities, where can we play, where can we be the most successful, and just make sure that we're focused on that. Those are the two main threads when it comes to the tactical data links and kind of the Satellite Services, space services, mobility businesses that we're growing.
Okay. Final one for me, and then I'm sure Phil wants to get back in. The space industry has been trying for a long time to consolidate. All of a sudden, we're seeing a bunch of deals proposed. Viasat, Inmarsat, Eutelsat, OneWeb, rumors of SES and Intelsat. What do you think the industry is looking at now that they're trying to solve for, and how do those differing potential permutations affect how you view your opportunity?
Okay. That's a good, you know, it's a good big picture question. The one thing, you know, the one thing that I wanna point out, when people talk about consolidation, a lot of times what, you know, what they kinda mean is that growth is slowing, and we wanna take advantages of cost synergies. What we see is, think of it as like the age of satellite as a broadcast mechanism is sort of winding down, but the age of satellite as a data transmission medium is really just getting started. That's kind of how we look at it. With, you know, from our perspective, you know what we did is we took two companies, us and Inmarsat, that were never really in broadcast business.
We're really focused on data, and we're trying to combine them in a way that creates more opportunities for growth. That was really the thesis for what we're trying to do. I think that there's another theme, which is more among the large legacy operators, which is how do they more pivot from broadcast to data. A lot of the other combinations that are either happening or being speculated on are really kind of around executing that, using maybe the broadcast business to charge up the data business. What we think is that the data business is so different from the broadcast business in almost every way.
The analogy that we always use is if you look at the companies that were preeminent in using terrestrial broadcast frequencies, none of those companies are the ones that have really been effective in the data business, terrestrial data business, which is primarily the mobile cellular business. We just think they're really different. We've got really good skills in that. We've got good growth. We think Inmarsat has a great customer base, good assets that we can leverage. That's kinda our thoughts on it. I think the theories behind some of the other combinations are a little bit different than that.
That really helps. Thanks, Mark. Always say well.
Thanks, Ric.
Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Koontz with Needham & Company.
Hi. Thanks for the question. Wanted to ask your updated view of how we should think about the ViaSat-3 kind of revenue ramp here for next year. You know, how long until you can fully monetize that capacity? You know, what percentage is kind of spoken for today with your current business plans? And secondly, is there gonna be any cannibalistic effect on your current business from a lower price, lower cost per bit platform? Thank you.
Just to review kind of what we've done with both ViaSat-1 and ViaSat-2, and we think things will play out fairly similarly on ViaSat-3. You know, with one and two, we really grew predominantly at the beginning on the residential base, 'cause that was the one that we could address the fastest. A lot of times what you've seen is if new operators trying to get into the data space, they've also tried to scale around the residential space. Then, you know, what we did with one and two is we really started growing the mobility business around that and some of the government business. Now coming to ViaSat-3. You know, the mobility businesses for us have more scale than they did when we did one and two.
We can scale those in, you know, by expanding them a little bit by using our existing business as a platform for that, by providing more services to some of our existing customers, by making some of the services that we'll do for existing customers. As we talked about before, when it comes to competitive differentiation in areas, you know, being able to do streaming video is a really attractive feature for in-flight communications. That, you know, I think we'll get more contribution early on from the mobility businesses with ViaSat-3 than we did with one or two. But we also see big opportunities in the fixed and residential business as well.
Just going to the point that you talked about, sort of like deterioration, kind of the way, you know, the way we frame this, we didn't put it in this current letter, but if you look at our past shareholder presentations, you know, kind of our main focus has been the productivity of bandwidth. So if we can get a lot more bandwidth for the same amount of capital investment, what our strategy has been has been to share that with our customers. So what we can do is we can, you know, give the existing customers more bandwidth for roughly the same amount of money, or we may come up with different price tiers, but the theme will be more bandwidth value per dollar.
As long as our productivity improvements are greater than what we shared with our customers, then it's like we both benefit from that. That's the theme, and it's that increased bandwidth value that's what's enabled us to grow our customer base each time we've launched a new satellite with better economics. We see the same things here. You know, the other thing that we've been able to do pretty consistently, and we see that happening here as well, is kind of aim to have the satellite, you know, so you can say it's full. That is that we've sold all the bandwidth within, like, two to three years.
what we tend to do is we follow up by, you know, constantly evolving that user base towards more and more economically valuable applications, which helps to drive our margins and our revenue. That's what we've done each time. Rather than, you know, like, one thing you can imagine as well, if I just sold a whole bunch of it for the life of the satellite at the beginning, you know, maybe I'd be getting rid of risk.
On the other hand, my opportunity to sort of groom that base and identify the applications and the customers that place the most value on it or to use it in new markets where we can apply additional products and services to increase the value, that's what's really enabled us to grow the revenue and the margins on the existing satellites for the last 10 or 11 years that we've been doing this. We see the same things happening this time.
That's helpful. That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like a lot of the terminals you've shipped, at least for some of the recent past, is upgradeable to support ViaSat-3.
Yes. Yeah. That, you know, given that we've known what the architecture is, that's what we've been aiming to do. Basically each time what we've been able to do is we've been able to make the existing satellite the existing terminal set can be used on the new satellites. The new terminal sets have additional features or capabilities that make them more useful or economical. Out of that comes one of the things I think is a little bit underappreciated in this is what we're doing is we're mixing many different types of service level agreements and value propositions on the satellite. In order to do that efficiently, you need to be able to, you know, we call schedule.
It's like, how do I fit together all these disparate types of services on these satellites so that we get very, very high efficiency of use. You know, like, one great example would be if you're in the airline mobility space and you have a hub airport with connecting flights from one airline or a bunch of different airlines several times a day, you have enormous demand at that airport for maybe an hour or so, and then in between that, the demand is way lower. What you really wanna do is you don't wanna take all that other bandwidth out of service just 'cause you're waiting for that next wave of use. The idea there is, you know, how do you schedule your bandwidth resources to get high efficiency?
That those peak to average demands, especially in the mobility space, can be a factor of 10 easily between high peak areas and low peak areas. What we tend to do is we build into the network and the latest generation of terminals more and more capabilities that let us schedule it really, really efficiently. Those are some of the things that drive our ability to, you know, increase margins and revenues even after we've built out the satellite.
That's really helpful, Mark. Thank you.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Mike Crawford from B. Riley.
Thank you. Just to go back to the Acacia award. Does that mean that Cisco, now Acacia, has
A downstream license, or do their customers like Lumentum that use their DSP need-
This is Peter Lopez. Sorry I missed your call. Please leave a message including your phone number, and I will return your call as soon as possible.
Hello?
Oh, sorry, Mike.
Did you hear the first part of my question?
I think so. Robert, do you want to-
Acacia has downstream customers like Lumentum that use its DSP. Do they need a license or is that incorporated in this agreement?
Just to be clear, Mike, there's no agreement. This was the result of a verdict. They paid a judgment, and those damages are for their use of our technology under an agreement that they did not pay us under. They were ordered to pay us for the use of the technology through 2018. That's what that verdict is related to. A license would have been provided under that agreement had they paid. They didn't. They were ordered to pay. That's what the verdict covers. Does that answer your question?
Well, partially. That's what I was getting at. Now you're paid up to 2018, but there's another four years, you know, under, past the bridge plus others using that DSP. Is there an expectation you might be able to get some more out of this, or is this issue settled in your opinion?
Yeah. We have two pending lawsuits against Acacia. They were stayed pending the outcome of the appeal. They are still staying, and will be probably restarted in the next month or so. One of them relates to the same technology that was at issue in the first case from the period after the end of 2018 to the present. The other one relates to additional technology. Those cases are still pending, and I'm not gonna speculate on or comment on pending litigation and what might happen with those. Those things will be restarted here probably within, certainly in this current quarter, hopefully within the next month or so.
Excellent. Great. That's kinda what I thought. Just switching gears. With the thruster failure on this Anik F2 satellite that powers some of your Northwest U.S. residential subscribers, I understand that satellite is gonna move to an inclined orbit and have an end sooner than expected end of life. What's the risk to your U.S. subscribers on that satellite? There's gonna be a void in service, particularly since we don't appear to have an official launch date or window for ViaSat-3, although you do say that you hope to have that launched by the end of December.
Yeah. I mean, Anik F2 has been a good satellite for us for longer than its expected life. Just to put things in perspective, you know, that's well under 1% of our satellite capacity. We've you know been able to constantly make improvements on the existing satellites that sort of make up for the variance in bandwidth. In the cases of individual customers who have terminals that are aimed at that satellite, what we'll do is we'll you know provide an upgrade path for those customers if we need to move them to a different satellite.
Okay. It was my understanding, like, you know, say my father in Picabo, Idaho, that that was the only satellite that he could hit from Viasat.
No. WildBlue, as an example, WildBlue overlaps all of Anik F2. We may have other resources as well that we can bring to.
It's not great too.
Yeah. ViaSat-2 provides, yeah, the whole coverage too. Thanks.
Okay. Final question is you talked about these robust tactical data link orders in this quarter. Does that include TrellisWare waveforms?
No. TrellisWare is a different waveform than Link 16 is. It's got a different application, different uses, more for personal communications than machine to machine. There are some machine to machine parts of it, but it's a different application.
Yeah, okay.
It wasn't, it didn't interlock it in with Link 16.
Right. Given that that's super high margin revenue, I think mostly royalty revenue for you, can you characterize what's going on with TrellisWare right now?
TrellisWare, you know, just to recap, it's a subsidiary. We own a little more than half of that subsidiary. One of their biggest businesses is they developed a waveform. You know, the government wanted a library of licensed open waveforms, and their waveform was one of the most popular in that library. A fair amount of their revenue is licensed revenue for either modules or products that use that waveform. There's, you know, that revenue stream would continue on for quite a few years. I think we're relatively early in the process of deploying the radios that use that waveform, and there are multiple companies building radio products that use a TrellisWare waveform.
Okay. Thank you, Mark.
Thanks, Mike.
Can I just, Mike, I just wanted to clarify real quick. I think I might have misspoke on when I mentioned the third Acacia case. I said different technology, I think. It's the same technology, different Acacia products that are issued. I just wanted to clarify that.
Okay. Thanks, Robert. I think that's all the questions that we have for today. Just to summarize, you know, we believe this is the low point in terms of quarterly financial performance, and we expect solid sequential organic growth throughout the rest of the year. We've got good revenue visibility in Viasat Communications, really good Government Systems awards, and we expect that those transient bottlenecks that really were more of a factor in the fourth quarter and the first quarter will be resolved and overall support our year-over-year and longer-term guidance. We're expecting the ViaSat-3 Americas launch should be coming up very shortly after our next earnings call. We're making good progress on the Inmarsat integration. We think those are both really great catalysts for continued strong growth.
for all the rest of our team, thanks for joining us this afternoon, and please don't hesitate to contact Peter Lopez or anybody on our team if you've got any other questions on our results or other topics that we discussed today. With that, I'll hand it back to the operator.
This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.