Iridium Reports 8% Growth in Q3 2024 Revenue

Iridium Communications posted a record total revenue of $212.8 million during the third quarter of 2024, up 8 percent from the prior-year period, and attributed the growth to higher government engineering and commercial service revenue.

Iridium’s U.S. Government Business

The McLean, Virginia-based satellite communications company said Thursday its U.S. government business recorded $26.5 million in Q3 service revenue and ended the quarter with 141,000 government subscribers with Internet-of-Things data subscribers accounting for 55 percent of that number.

As of Sept. 30, government voice and data subscribers rose 3 percent from the same period last year to 63,000.

Iridium saw its third-quarter engineering and support revenue increase 22 percent to $30.7 million, driven by a rise in U.S. government activity, and noted that it expects its engineering and support sales to increase in 2024 as it expands work on a contract with the Space Development Agency.

The company also reported record operational EBITDA of $124.4 million, up from the prior-year period’s figure of $121.3 million.

Total billable subscribers also rose 11 percent year-over-year to 2.48 million, driven by the growth in commercial IoT subscribers.

CEO Matt Desch on SDA Contract Award

At an earnings call Thursday, Iridium CEO Matt Desch highlighted a $491.6 million contract modification the Space Development Agency awarded to the team of Iridium and General Dynamics Mission Systems to provide ground management and integration support for SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

“With our most recent award, the total value of our contract with the SDA grows to approximately 400 million since inception, of which 260 million or so remains to be recognized through 2029 with potential for additional opportunities in the future,” the chief executive told analysts.

“The increase in our scope of work on this multi-year project supports our outlook for record engineering support revenues this year,” the 2024 Wash100 Award winner added.

Under the award, the GDMS-Iridium team will work with SDA and related stakeholders to develop a ground system and oversee the integration of the ground enterprise with the agency’s Tranche 2 constellation.

Iridium’s share of the contract modification is valued at $239 million over five years.