Telesat Q4 2025 Earnings Report

Telesat EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -$0.97
• Consensus EPS: -$1.05
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.08
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Telesat Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $68.48 million
• Expected Revenue: $91.95 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$23.47 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Telesat Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2025
• Date: 3/17/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 10:30AM ET

Telesat (NASDAQ:TSAT) is a Canadian satellite operator that provides communications services to customers worldwide. Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, the company operates a fleet of geostationary satellites and related ground infrastructure designed to support broadband connectivity, broadcasting, enterprise communications, mobility and government applications.

Telesat serves telecommunications companies, broadcasters, content providers, governments and other organizations across North America and international markets. Its services include satellite capacity, managed connectivity and networking solutions for applications such as television distribution, cellular backhaul, in-flight and maritime connectivity, rural broadband and secure communications.

The company is also developing Telesat Lightspeed, a low-Earth-orbit satellite network intended to provide high-performance, low-latency broadband connectivity to enterprise, government and telecommunications customers. Telesat is led by President and Chief Executive Officer Dan Goldberg, who has held the role since 2006. Its shares trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol TSAT.

Telesat Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Neutral Sentiment: Company reports substantial progress on Lightspeed (satellites, software, user terminals) with first launches still targeted at the end of this year and a heavy 2027 launch cadence, but full global commercial service is now expected ~three months later, around end of Q1 2028.
• Positive Sentiment: Telesat is adding 500 MHz of military Ka‑band (Mil‑Ka) to the initial 156 satellites for an incremental ~CAD 25M and no schedule impact, which management says materially expands its addressable allied defense market and should help grow Lightspeed backlog.
• Positive Sentiment: 2025 adjusted EBITDA was CAD 213M (above guidance) and the company highlights liquidity for Lightspeed: CAD 337M LEO cash on hand plus CAD 1.82B available under Lightspeed financing and $325M vendor financing, which it expects will fund the project to commercial service.
• Negative Sentiment: Net loss widened to CAD 530M in 2025 (driven by a GEO goodwill impairment and higher derivative liabilities), legacy GEO revenue is guided down to CAD 300–320M in 2026, and Telesat Canada faces ~CAD 1.7B of debt maturing Dec 2026 that must be refinanced — a material near‑term risk.

Presentation

[Operator]

I would now like to turn the conference over to James Ratcliffe, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

[James Ratcliffe, VP of Investor Relations at Telesat]

Thank you, Desiree, and good morning, everyone. This morning, we filed our Annual Report for the period ending 31st of December 2025 on Form 20-F with the SEC and on SEDAR+. Our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements. There are risks that Telesat's actual results may differ materially from the results contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of known and unknown risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of known risks, please see Telesat's annual report and updates filed with the SEC. Telesat assumes no responsibility to update or revise these forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Dan Goldberg, Telesat's President and Chief Executive Officer.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Okay. Thanks, James, and thank you all for joining us this morning. I'll say a few words about the business and our focus for this year, and then I'll hand over to Donald to speak to the numbers in more detail. We'll then open the call up to questions. I'm pleased with the results we achieved last year and the steps we've taken to position Telesat for significant growth and to capture the compelling opportunities we're seeing in the market today. Our GEO business faces structural challenges. We've discussed that before, but we came in ahead of our adjusted EBITDA guidance for last year and within the constraints of what's essentially a fixed cost business. We've optimized our cost structure where we can to maximize the cash flow of that business.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Turning to LEO, I'm very pleased with the significant progress we've been making on Lightspeed, including the very tangible progress on the development of the network, the satellites, the multiple software platforms that power the constellation and support our customers, and the development of the advanced user terminals and landing stations that comprise the terrestrial portion of the Lightspeed network. It's very positive, and it's very exciting. As we've said previously, our first satellites are scheduled to launch at the end of this year, and then we have a very heavy launch cadence planned throughout next year, 2027. Although our expectation has been for Lightspeed to enter full global commercial service around the end of next year, it now looks like we'll enter service about three months later than that. Around the end of Q1, 2028.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

The cause of the slight slip is the readiness of the chips, the ASICs, which power the onboard processor and phased array antennas of the Lightspeed satellites. These chips were being developed by SatixFy, which some of you may know was acquired by MDA last year. The delivery of these chips is one of the key schedule risks our program faced. For that reason, we were pleased that MDA acquired SatixFy, given that MDA has much greater financial and technical resources and is also our prime contractor for the Lightspeed satellites. We're tracking the development of these chips pretty forensically, and based on that and the assurances we're getting from MDA, we feel good that the chips will be available in time to support the program schedule.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Turning to the commercial landscape for Lightspeed, it's absolutely the case that global market dynamics are evolving in ways that I believe are very accretive to the Lightspeed business case. The fact of the matter is there's a transition taking place across the verticals we serve toward LEO. The impressive progress Starlink has achieved is a clear testament to that, and so too are the very significant opportunities we're seeing for Telesat Lightspeed. Last year, as you know, we signed a substantial agreement with Viasat to use Lightspeed for a range of services, prominently among them, broadband to commercial airlines. Airlines and business jet users around the world are showing a strong appetite for high throughput, low latency satellite connectivity, and Lightspeed has been optimized to serve their fast-growing requirements. Without a doubt, some of the most compelling near-term opportunities we're pursuing are in the government defense market.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

I've said on previous calls that we've become increasingly bullish on the government and defense opportunity for Telesat Lightspeed, and the trends there only continue to get better. The geopolitical environment is driving once in a generation increases in defense investments by allied countries globally, with defense organizations increasingly focused on the need for mission-critical, resilient, reliable, high throughput, and low latency satellite communication services from dependable providers. Indeed, the government of Canada, in its recently released defense industrial strategy, identified satellite communications as a critical sovereign capability, pledging in the first instance to procure these important services from Canadian companies like Telesat in order to meet its and Canada's allies' sovereignty and security requirements with the Arctic a particularly important area of focus. Canada certainly isn't alone in identifying the need for advanced LEO services for defense and sovereignty purposes.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

The U.S., the EU, Germany, Italy, South Korea are just a few of the governments that have plans to procure such capabilities. Given the fact that Lightspeed was designed from the very outset to meet the demanding requirements of defense users, Telesat is well-positioned to meet those needs. To give you a few examples of those opportunities, Telesat Government Solutions, our U.S. subsidiary, has received an IDIQ contract under the U.S. SHIELD program, making us an approved supplier for the over $150 billion Golden Dome project, in which robust and resilient connectivity plays a key role. In Korea, we recently signed an MOU with Hanwha Systems, a leading provider of defense equipment and services to the Korean and other governments, to work together on leveraging the Telesat Lightspeed solution and Hanwha's defense offerings, as well as to develop user terminals compatible with Telesat Lightspeed.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Of course, as we announced in December, Telesat and MDA have been selected by the government of Canada to develop and deploy ESCP-P, a next-generation satellite communications platform to provide connectivity for the Canadian Armed Forces in the far north. This is a significant opportunity for us, and we're working with our partners to get under contract for that as soon as possible. In light of the order of magnitude of the opportunity to serve allied defense users, and as you may have seen in our separate release this morning, we're further optimizing Telesat Lightspeed for defense requirements by adding military Ka spectrum, or Mil-Ka as it's called, to our initial 156 Lightspeed satellites. We fully expect additional satellites we'll add to the constellation in the future will also have Mil-Ka capability.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Specifically, we're dedicating 500 MHz of our Lightspeed capacity to Mil-Ka, which is 25% of the total spectrum that Lightspeed will operate on. Because Mil-Ka spectrum is adjacent to the commercial Ka-band spectrum used by Lightspeed, the change in frequency plan is a straightforward one, resulting in no adverse schedule impact and only a modest cost impact. When I say modest cost impact, the cost is around $25 million, which is, I don't know, less than 0.5% of the total program cost for the first 156 satellites. The 500 MHz of Mil-Ka will replace the same amount of commercial Ka-band spectrum on the network's user link.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

That's the link between the satellites and the user terminals that our customers will have with the gateway link, so that's the link between the satellites and our gateways located at various locations throughout the world. The gateway link is unaffected by the spectrum change. Allied defense users want Mil-Ka capability, and with this change to Lightspeed, we'll be able to offer a very substantial increase to the total current global supply of Mil-Ka with performance capabilities that are vastly superior to the Mil-Ka platforms that Allied governments have historically relied upon. Specifically, because we're offering it from LEO on a highly flexible, highly advanced constellation, it will be more resilient, more secure, more high throughput, and lower latency, and it'll cover the entire planet, including the poles, which means, of course, the Arctic.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

As you can probably tell, we're very excited about this change to Lightspeed and about the opportunities we're seeing out there. We're very bullish on Lightspeed's prospects, and I'd say now more than ever. Donald will take you through our financial expectations for 2026, but I wanted to say a few words about our key priorities for the year. In LEO, naturally, we're laser-focused on successfully and timely deploying Telesat Lightspeed while expanding our revenue backlog in advance of global commercial availability. Given the various opportunities we're pursuing, we're very optimistic we'll be successful in meaningfully growing our Lightspeed backlog this year.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

In our GEO business, our focus remains on maximizing the revenue we can generate from our existing satellite fleet, while at the same time being highly disciplined on costs in order to mitigate as much as possible the EBITDA and cash flow impact of the ongoing revenue decline in that business. Of course, we remain very focused on refinancing the Telesat Canada debt, the debt that's tied to our legacy GEO business. We continue to work closely with our advisors who are engaged with the advisors representing some of the larger lenders with the aim of reaching a successful result prior to the initial debt maturities in December of this year. I'll end my remarks there and hand over to Donald to go over the numbers.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

While this is the first time you'll be hearing from Donald, he's already been on board since last October and has come up to speed, as we knew he would, very quickly. Donald, with that official welcome, over to you.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

Thank you, Dan, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to be joining you this morning and to do my first call as Telesat CFO. My prepared remark today will focus on highlights from this morning's press release and filings, including our guidance for 2026. Telesat ended the year 2025 with reported revenue of CAD 418 million, adjusted EBITDA of CAD 213 million, and with CAD 150 million of cash on the balance sheet. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Telesat reported revenue was CAD 94 million and adjusted EBITDA was CAD 40 million. Revenue in 2025 was in line with our expectation and our guidance.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

Adjusted EBITDA of CAD 213 million, including CAD 33 million in expense relating to our equity distribution in Q3 and our debt refinancing process, was well above our guidance of CAD 170 million-CAD 190 million. Due to higher than anticipated capitalized labor to our Lightspeed project, lower than expected increase in our head count, and except for the equity distribution and debt refinancing expense, lower OpEx in our legacy GEO business segment. Interest expense for 2025 totaled CAD 218 million, down from CAD 240 million in 2024, and CAD 270 million in 2023, reflecting our buyback of $857 million of Telesat Canada debt. Non-cash interest expense of CAD 29 million incurred on Telesat Lightspeed financing was capitalized in 2025.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

Net loss for the year was CAD 530 million compared to CAD 302 million in 2024. The negative variance of CAD 220 million was principally due to reduced revenue and EBITDA, impairment of goodwill relating to our GEO business. We also recorded an increase in the derivative liability relating to the Telesat Lightspeed financing warrant caused by the meaningful increase in the valuation of the project as we are making strong progress on the development of the constellation. This was partially offset by a foreign exchange gain associated with the impact of stronger Canadian dollar on our U.S. dollar-denominated debt at the end of the year.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

EBITDA from our legacy GEO business segment totaled CAD 284 million or CAD 317 million, excluding CAD 33 million of expense related to the equity distribution and debt refinancing-related costs, representing a margin of 77%, down from 80% in 2024. LEO loss before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization for the year was CAD 67 million, driven by operating expense of CAD 72 million, which were slightly below our guidance, updated in October 2025 of CAD 75 million-CAD 85 million, reflecting higher capitalized labor and slower pace of hiring in 2025. Capital expenditure in 2025 on an accrued basis were CAD 708 million, of which nearly all were related to Telesat Lightspeed. This was below our expectation and our guidance of CAD 900 million-CAD 1.1 billion for the year.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

This was mostly attributable to milestone payment we expect to make to MDA last year that will be made in 2026. In September, we distributed 62% of the equity of Telesat Lightspeed to our wholly-owned subsidiary of Telesat Corporation to provide us with more flexibility to raise capital in the future. Through our advisor, we are engaged with the advisor of the ad hoc group of lenders with the objective of successfully refinancing Telesat Canada debt before it matures in 2026 and 2027. You will note enhanced disclosure in our financial statements and MD&A regarding liquidity given the need to refinance $1.7 billion of debt in Telesat Canada coming due in December 2026. Telesat Canada financial statements were prepared on a going concern basis as usual.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

I would now like to turn to our financial guidance for 2026, which were disclosed in our press release earlier this morning. We've modified our disclosure in an effort to provide guidance that track the metric we focus on as we run the business. We are therefore providing guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA of our legacy GEO business segment. For the LEO business segment, we're providing guidance for the total amount we will invest in Lightspeed in 2026, including operating costs incurred and capitalized labor and interest. We believe this approach will provide investor with the information they need to track our investment and progress in the Lightspeed project.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

On the GEO side, we expect 2026 revenue of between CAD 300 million and CAD 320 million, representing a year-on-year decline of CAD 90 million-CAD 110 million compared to 2025, roughly evenly split between our broadcast and enterprise segment. In broadcast, we expect revenue from DISH to decline due to the reduced usage of Nimiq 5 and the end of the Anik F3 contract in April 2025. Revenue from Bell are also expected to decline due to the expiration of its contract on Nimiq 4 satellite in October 2025. On the enterprise side, the largest impact come from declining revenue under our restructure contract with Xplore, the vast majority of which being non-cash, as well as our Telstar 14R satellite reaching end of life.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

With lower expected revenue, we expect GEO segment adjusted EBITDA to be between CAD 210 million and CAD 220 million in 2026, excluding any expense related to our debt refinancing process. As a reminder, these costs, plus the costs related to the transfer of 62% of Telesat LEO, amounted to CAD 33 million in 2025. In the LEO segment, we expect to spend between CAD 1 billion and CAD 1.2 billion on Telesat Lightspeed in 2026, including operating costs, capitalized labor, and interest and capital expenditure incurred with third-party vendors and supplier. I'll note that our guidance assume an average exchange rate of 1.38 Canadian dollar per U.S. dollar.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

Turning to our cash and liquidity position, we had approximately CAD 206 million of cash on hand at the end of 2025 in our GEO business segment, and the business continued to generate healthy cash flow. We believe the combination of this cash on hand and the cash flow generated by our legacy GEO assets in 2026 to be sufficient to meet all the company obligations prior to Telesat Canada debt maturing in December. In the LEO segment, we end the year with CAD 337 million in cash on hand. This, combined with CAD 1.82 billion available under our Telesat Lightspeed financing and $325 million available from our vendor financing, is expected to be sufficient to fully fund the Telesat Lightspeed project until it achieve global commercial service.

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

Before I conclude my prepared remark, I would like to confirm that we are in compliance with all covenants in our credit agreement and indenture. I also want to remind everyone that Section 5 of our 20-F includes the unaudited condensed consolidated financial information. I'll now turn the call back to the operator for the Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone in your device, please pick up your handset to ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. We do request for today's session that you please limit to one question and one follow-up question only. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of David McFadgen with Cormark Securities. Your line is open.

[David McFadgen, Analyst at Cormark Securities]

All right. Hi, guys. A couple questions. Maybe I'll start off with the decision to put some of the Lightspeed capacity on the military Ka-band. I thought that, you know, when you would do that, you would also announce the deal with the Canadian Armed Forces. I was kind of surprised that you didn't announce that at the same time. Do you still expect a deal with the Canadian Armed Forces, where you would license part of that military Ka-band spectrum?

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Good morning, David. It's Dan. So, it was back in December that we announced, you know, we were joined by the government of Canada and MDA, and it was announced that MDA and Telesat had been selected to form a strategic partnership with the government of Canada to deliver ESCP-P. What, you know, is known about ESCP-P is a few things. One, it's a multi-frequency band constellation for support in the Arctic of Canada's kind of defense and sovereignty requirements. It's Mil-Ka. It is X-band and UHF, so all kind of, you know, spectrum that defense users frequently use. You know, while it was announced back in December, we're still not under contract, which is not a surprise.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

It takes some time to do that. We, and by we, I mean, Telesat and MDA are currently engaged with the government of Canada, you know, working on that. We're focused on getting that done sooner than later. Because we're still negotiating everything and it's not done yet, you know, we can't say exactly what it is, the constellation will look like. It is the case that by putting Mil-Ka on Lightspeed, you know, Lightspeed is better situated to meet some of those requirements. We're not in a position to say anything more about that right now. We are focused on getting that contract done certainly before the end of this year.

[David McFadgen, Analyst at Cormark Securities]

Okay. I would imagine that you could also sell that military Ka-band capacity to other defense departments around the world, right? Like the Canadian Armed Forces isn't gonna take the entire 500 MHz or is it?

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Yeah. Listen, as I said in my remarks, the quantum of Mil-Ka capacity that we're bringing to market by proliferating it across, you know, all of our satellites is a massive increase. It's a little hard to track this stuff because it's Mil-Ka, so you don't know everything. But for instance, you know, the U.S. and its allies use the WGS network. The U.K. has Skynet. There are other kind of pockets of Mil-Ka elsewhere. Historically, it's all been in GEO. But as you can imagine, the amount of capacity across those systems relative to what we're bringing on Lightspeed, I mean, you know, whether it's an order of magnitude increase, but it is dramatically higher. And it's not just the sheer quantum of capacity we're bringing.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

The capacity that we're bringing, the performance characteristics are so much more compelling. It's, you know, high throughput, low latency, distributed, which makes it more resilient. It covers the poles, which, you know, there's a heavy focus on the Arctic right now for all sorts of reasons. Yes, you know, we will be able to make that capability available, not just to the government of Canada, but to all of the allied nations, NATO and other allied governments.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Not to go on for too long here, but you know, there is a significant focus with military planners on having access to these kinds of capabilities given the nature of modern warfare, given the nature of the fact that so many more of the platforms that they use are high bandwidth, you know, consumption platforms, many of which operate autonomously and need these high throughput, low latency, very resilient, very secure links. We think about this as a very significant opportunity for Telesat and we caught this at a great time. We caught it early enough in the build-out of Lightspeed so that it's not schedule impactful.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

As I mentioned in my remarks, the cost is pretty trivial, but because we were already using the commercial Ka and because the military Ka-band is immediately adjacent, the changes that needed to be made to accommodate the Mil-Ka on Lightspeed were very straightforward. Look, this isn't something that we figured out last week. This is something that we had been thinking about, you know, for some time now. We were able to do some advanced planning work with MDA to make sure that this would be as, you know, as easy, again, from a schedule perspective, from a cost perspective, as possible. We're really pleased about this.

[David McFadgen, Analyst at Cormark Securities]

Okay. Maybe I could just follow up on a comment you made. You know, you talked about ESCP-P, right? ESCP-P. You know, the military wants to be able to have a constellation running at X-band and UHF. Lightspeed just runs on Ka-band. Do you envision another potential constellation here that you would be able to offer up that would run on X-band and UHF? Is that a possibility?

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

It's still a little premature to say. I mean, I really want us to get through the good work that's taking place right now with the Government of Canada. You know, again, we're wanting to move quickly on that. The good news is the Government of Canada, as you've probably heard, is very much wanting to streamline and accelerate their procurement processes. We've got a pretty motivated counterparty to move these discussions along. All I would say is to you know, just stay tuned on that.

[David McFadgen, Analyst at Cormark Securities]

Maybe if I can just ask one more. I don't want to take up too much time. Just for 2026 in the guidance, it would be really helpful if you could give us an idea on the EBITDA loss as you would expect out of LEO. 'Cause obviously the way-

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

I think you can figure it out. If you look at the guidance, you know, I think what you have there is, you know, the total expenditures associated with Lightspeed, so both CapEx and OpEx. If we can break it down, I think it's CAD 777 million in total, Donald. Can you give a kind of a range for what we think the OpEx piece of that would be?

[Donald Tremblay, CFO at Telesat]

Like, including the CAD 1 billion-CAD 1.1 billion, there's probably somewhere between CAD 90 million-CAD 110 million of, like, OpEx in Lightspeed that will incur this year, depending on how much labor we're capitalizing. One of the reasons we decide to not show, like, the EBITDA specifically for Lightspeed is the, like, how much labor are we capitalizing versus expensing. Always difficult to predict when we're looking forward.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Each quarter we'll report on what it is, so that everyone can tell what it is.

[David McFadgen, Analyst at Cormark Securities]

Okay. All right. That's really helpful. Thank you.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Caleb Henry with Quilty Space. Your line is open.

[Caleb Henry, Director of Research at Quilty Space]

Hi. Thanks, guys. Just a question on the launch schedule with the three-month delay. Do you have a sense of how many satellites will be launched by the end of 2027 now?

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Yeah, I think we can probably give a sense of that. You know, two things. We are still holding our launch schedule for our initial launch. You know, that is still being focused towards the end of this year. That hasn't changed. Our expectation is, you know, our significant launch cadence will, because we're gonna launch those first satellites, and as we said before, we're gonna test them extensively before we start launching, you know, the rest of the satellites.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

By the time we launch the first 2 satellites, do the orbit raising, and then do the amount of testing that we and a bunch of our customers wanna do, it'll be sort of mid-next year where we kick off with the heavy launch schedule. By the end of the year, we will have enough satellites in orbit so that we can launch full global commercial coverage, but we slipped the date back a quarter because you still got to do the orbit raising and whatnot. When, for us, to do full global coverage, that's about 96 satellites. You know, we should have 96 satellites at least in orbit by the end of next year. Then we're just gonna, you know, just keep going. That's the plan.

[Caleb Henry, Director of Research at Quilty Space]

Okay. On the Mil-Ka, you talked about the spacecraft side. Can you just share any updates on does that require any new gateway infrastructure? On the user terminal side, will those Mil-Ka user terminals be available at the same time as the commercial ones or where is that in the development cycle?

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Yeah. Good question. The gateway, because I, you know, I mentioned in the opening remarks that the spectrum that we use for the gateway frequencies isn't changing, so the gateways are totally unimpacted. On the user terminal side, yes, there will be Mil-Ka compatible user terminals for a variety of different platforms, ships, planes, drones, manpacks, that will be available. One of the, you know, great things about operating in commercial Ka is that the Mil-Ka is adjacent. The user terminal partners that we've already been working with their flat panel antennas, the modems and whatnot, can accommodate the addition of the Mil-Ka. We'll be engaging with, you know, all of our customers, defense and commercial alike, with a good family of advanced flat panel antennas.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

By the way, we talk a lot about flat panel antennas. The parabolic antennas are still out there, and they are quite efficient. Those will be available too, because they are good for certain applications. Yes, those will be all available when we go into service.

[Caleb Henry, Director of Research at Quilty Space]

Yeah, all right. Thank you.

[Operator]

Question comes from the line of Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

[Laura LaPointe, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank AG]

Hey, this is Laura on for Edison, and thanks for taking my question. I want to follow up on that Canadian Arctic military communication constellation topic. Could you provide more sense on the backlog potentials from both the Canadian military and the others? And any additional spend you anticipate, not just from the spectrum perspective, but for overall OpEx required, compared to the baseline Lightspeed?

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

On ESCP-P, first off, there's a lot of information about ESCP-P that's kind of publicly available. It's been a program of record for the Department of Defense here for many years. I won't speculate just now on, you know, potential backlog impact, nor on kind of impacts to our broader plan, whether that's spending or revenue profile and whatnot. You know, we need to get through this contract negotiation with the government of Canada. I will say on backlog creation, you know, less about ESCP-P, but just a broader observation, as I mentioned in our opening remarks, the pipeline of activities for lightspeed is robust.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

A lot of that right now in this environment relates to kind of defense applications, defense and sovereignty applications. Because of that, we are very bullish about our ability to significantly grow our backlog for Lightspeed this year. Our expectation is this time next year our backlog tied to LEO is fairly dramatically higher than it is today. You know, with the caveat we've got to sign these deals. With the caveat also that because you know many of those opportunities are government related, government opportunities often kind of have a life of their own in terms of closing them.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Notwithstanding that's our expectation that we will be closing significant opportunities for Lightspeed this year, and that will have a very significant favorable impact on backlog for Lightspeed.

[Laura LaPointe, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank AG]

Okay. Got you. Appreciate it.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We do have our next question comes from the line of Walter Piecyk with LightShed Partners. Your line is open.

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Hey, Dan. On the spectrum change, this is probably like a tactical wonky question I'm not fully understanding, because if I went back to like I think it was the Q3 of 2024. As you may recall, I was asking about, you know, adding additional spectrums, and you refer to that as payloads. I think at the time you're like, for the first 198 satellites, the ship has sailed, and that it didn't seem. I think I've asked this question a couple times on earnings calls that you couldn't add spectrum, 'cause there was obviously some available, that was out there, to the constellation to broaden out the services. I'm guessing there's something different because there's a swap out of KA or whatever it is. Can you explain why that's the case?

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

If there's some update that this late in the game, you can actually change the spectrum that's in the constellation.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Yeah. Yeah, my recollection. First off, thanks for the question, Walter. My recollection is when you and others have asked that question in the past, it's mostly been in the context of like D2D. You know, can you add spectrum for direct-to-device applications, whether that's L-band or S-band or C-band or whatnot. There, because that spectrum is so far away from the 28 gigahertz band that the commercial Ka-band is in, you would need a different payload to transmit on those frequencies, and that would be a very significant change to the satellite. If we wanted to support our, you know, existing mission, broadband connectivity in Ka-band, and add a direct-to-device payload, for instance, we would need a bigger satellite.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

I mean, it would be a very different thing. What's different here is the military Ka-band, as I said. It's also in the 28 gigahertz. It is contiguous with the commercial Ka-band. We've really just shifted the frequency plan up by 500 megahertz for the user link, and that's a pretty easy modification. That's the difference, and

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Okay. Well, that was very understandable and a lot less technical than I was expecting, so I appreciate that.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

You know, the great news is, Walter, you're talking to somebody who was a history major. If I had asked our CTO to explain it, you might not have followed. No, I'm kidding.

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Oh, let's not have the CTO get on. Those guys drone on forever. Let's just steer on Amazon. I mean, it feels like there's a slower rollout. They're getting hazed a little bit by the FCC chairman about their rollout. For you guys, I mean, obviously with the progress, you're heading towards this first launch end of next year.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

No, I'm sorry. No, end of this year.

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Have you seen it shift?

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Up, end of this year, Walter.

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Yeah, that's what I said. I thought I said. Maybe I misspoke. My question, though, is like, because of the, you know, what's going on in Amazon and your progress, have you found it easier to get the attention of some of these enterprise government customers? Are you seeing more kind of fluidity there in getting towards contracts than maybe six months ago? You know, both from your progress and also perhaps from Amazon's lack thereof.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

I think we're certainly getting more engagement with the customer base and I'd say particularly the defense, the government customer base. Part of that is we're just getting, as you point out, closer to being in service. A big part of it is demand for this kind of capability has grown dramatically over the last, call it, you know, 12+ months because of the changes in the geopolitical environment. Some of that's been a function of everybody seeing how the Ukraine hostilities have unfolded and how consequential access to Starlink is in a modern conflict.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

When I say Starlink, I really mean an advanced LEO constellation that can support, you know, all sorts of things in a battlefield domain, whether that's, again, flying drones, communications with forward operating units, fighter jets, just all of that. Part of it is we're getting closer. Part of it is there's a much greater focus on the need to have these kinds of capabilities from, you know, a diversity of suppliers. I think, you know, all these governments want to be able to work with a range of different constellation providers in part, just to have more resilience, more diversity, less vendor lock, you know, that kind of rationale. With respect to Amazon, you know, as far as I can tell, they're coming.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

You know, it's taken them, I think, longer than they had anticipated. They point to, you know, the lack of launch opportunities, and we understand that. I think the forward progress that and the traction that we're getting in the market has a lot less to do about, you know, their schedule and just a whole lot more to do about the capabilities that we're bringing, and this moment in time in terms of the geopolitical environment, and what customers want. I've spoken a lot about defense, but these other verticals that we're focused on also are embracing LEO, whether that's aero, whether that's maritime, whether that's, you know, fixed enterprise backhaul for MNOs. You're seeing, you know, significant traction in all those markets with LEO.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

They are for sure, as we get closer to being in service, all of these things have been, you know, very favorable tailwinds.

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

That's very comprehensive. Thank you. I'm hoping you're planning on some type of launch party because Florida is a lovely place to be in December, especially for us.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Well, our

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Florida.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Florida is lovely, but our launches will be coming out of Vandenberg. That's the best.

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Oh, okay. California, that's fine. Even better.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

I think you'll.

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Even better.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

We will. Listen, we're gonna be having a lot of launches, you know, in the next, you know, 18 months. We'll have a lot of opportunity to celebrate that.

[Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners]

Awesome. Thank you.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Thanks.

[Operator]

That concludes the Q&A session. I would like to turn the call back over to our CEO, Dan Goldberg, for closing remarks.

[Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO at Telesat]

Okay. Well, operator, thank you very much, and thank you, all for joining us this morning. We look forward to speaking with you, shortly, when we release our Q1 results. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining in. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Daniel Goldberg, President and CEO
• Donald Tremblay, CFO
• James Ratcliffe, VP of Investor Relations

Analysts

• Caleb Henry, Director of Research at Quilty Space
• David McFadgen, Analyst at Cormark Securities
• Laura LaPointe, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank AG
• Walter Piecyk, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners