Operator
Operator
Welcome to ViaSat's Fiscal Year 2016 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Your host for today's call is Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Dankberg.
Viasat, Inc. (VSAT)
Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, May 25, 2016
$58.07
-1.01%
Same-Day
+0.29%
1 Week
+0.72%
1 Month
-4.24%
vs S&P
+0.39%
Operator
Operator
Welcome to ViaSat's Fiscal Year 2016 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Your host for today's call is Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Dankberg.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay. Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody and welcome to our earnings call for our fourth quarter and full-year fiscal year 2016. So I'm Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. And I've got with me here today, Shawn Duffy, our CFO; Keven Lippert, our General Counsel, Bruce Dirks, our Treasurer; and Rick Baldridge, our COO; who is traveling. And before we start, Keven will provide our Safe Harbor disclosure.
Keven Lippert
Management
Thanks Mark. As you know, this discussion contains 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 and copies are available from the SEC or from our website. With that said, back to you, Mark.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay. Thanks Keven. So we'll be referring to slides that are available over the web. I'll start with some highlights and the top level business overview, and after that Shawn, will discuss the consolidated and segment level financial results. And then I'll give some additional details and color on our business segments, and then finally I’ll summarize our outlook and we will take questions. So we think it’s most helpful to think of our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2016 results in three pieces. First, we focus on the revenue and earnings growth in the satellite services and government systems segments. We expect those segments will drive most of our growth in the next few years, and those segments results very effectively show the competitive advantage of our highly productive satellites and vertical integration as well as our overall business strategies. Those segments had record revenues in the fourth quarter and for the year. In Q4, satellite services was up 12% year-over-year and government up 9% year-over-year on revenues. For fiscal-year 2016, satellite services had 17% year-over-year recovery revenue growth, and government systems had 13%. For fiscal 2016, we had record revenues company-wide also. Adjusted EBITDA growth was even stronger in those two segments with both segments reaching record levels. Satellite services was up 21% in the fourth quarter and up in recurring adjusted EBITDA for the full-year by 45% on a year-over-year basis. Government systems was up 22% in the fourth quarter and 20% for fiscal year 2016 in adjusted EBITDA. Second, we think we have an attractive growth outlook. In government, we booked a record $241 million in orders in the fourth quarter and $164 million in revenues, and we had a very strong book-to-bill ratio of 1.2 to 1 for the year. Satellite services ARPU grew 7%…
Shawn Duffy
Management
Thanks Mark. I’ll spend a brief moment on Slide 5, which shows revenue and adjusted EBITDA performance for the fourth quarter. Then I will move to our annual results. As Mark mentioned, the government systems and satellite services segment drove our revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth more than offsetting declines in commercial network. Specifically, revenues were up 12% and 9% in the period for satellite services and government systems, while adjusted EBITDA was up 21% and 22% respectively. These were record revenues in both segments. In satellite services, our adjusted EBITDA margin is 44%, up four percentage points from last year, and our government segment had an incredibly strong earnings quarter as well hitting a new record for adjusted EBITDA of $43.5 million, driven by our fastest growing area, government mobility, and our legacy stronghold tactical data link. So we’re happy with how we’re doing in both top-line growth and operating margins in these areas. In commercial networks, our Q4 reflected the large program wind down we saw throughout this year in antenna systems and on our NBN Co. project plus lower consumer terminal sales to distributors. In Q4 FY 2016, these large programs are very near complete. So, our commercial networks business have pretty much stabilized from an operating perspective, and our adjusted EBITDA results mostly reflect our scaling R&D investments for highest upgrades as well as expanding commercial air business which I’ll hit on a bit more as we look to FY 2016 as a whole on the next slide. Fiscal 2016 was very strong year for us both financially and strategically. We achieved record top-line performance with consolidated revenues, up $1.4 billion, driven by strong gains in government systems and satellite services. Our government systems revenue grew by $72 million, a 13% year-over-year gain led by government…
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay thanks Shawn. So with that financial background of mine, it’s helpful to take a broader view of our strategic approach through satellite services and government system segments. In general, we’d like to find business strategies that are disruptive in the sense that they change the dimensions of competition and the underlying business models in our target markets and that means bringing value propositions to market that are fundamentally different than those that currently exist. Not just same thing with lower price or even same price for incremental performance improvements. When we can bring through abundance where incumbents have dependent on scarcity in markets that create bandwidth exactly going to be a good bet. Incumbents with substantial assets built on the scarcity model generally find our approach typical to defend and we can leverage powerful macro market forces, nothing is most obvious in our high capacity satellite services but there is similar effects in tactical data links and information security. Finally each of these markets already involve significant barriers and we believe that the technologies we inject into those markets can create variable competitive advantages and yield attractive returns. So we got good success with ViaSat-1 in using disruptive bandwidth economics in these up markets in satellite services. We’ve been constantly refining our marketing approach and in fiscal year 2016 with very little bandwidth to work with and therefore very modest subscriber account growth, we grew revenue by 17% and adjusted EBITDA 45% excluding the non-recurring portion of the SSL front. We achieved this by making our service plans more attractive by increasing bandwidth availability and peak speed. We anticipate continued solid growth built around that strategy and we see great potential in expanding the ViaSat-2 with double the bandwidth economics gives us much more speed in bandwidth to work…
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Rich Valera with Needham & Company. Your line is now open.
Rich Valera
Analyst
Thank you. Good evening. Just wanted to circle back to the EBITDA guidance you’ve given for fiscal 2017 last quarter, I think it was around $380 million to $390 million? Can you just refresh that where we expect to be relative to that number?
Mark Dankberg
Management
I think, so the big thing would be the go -- I think go through the methodology that I just described in that outlook slide, think about sort of our -- what our revenues would be like, single-digit, high-single-digits, and basically ballpark we’ve given the 13.5 range and we had 25-ish percent operational -- 25% operational EBITDA, debt-to-EBITDA in fiscal 2016. So think about it by improving by a few percentage points and that would get you to sort of what our adjusted EBTIDA would be, but then the main difference relative to last quarter is we’ve got more inside on the rate of the ViaSat-3, primarily those ViaSat-3 R&D expenses, and you back out that about close $100 billion from there to get to adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2017.
Rich Valera
Analyst
Got it. And so just to revisit the fourth quarter, so you came I guess in around $15 million shy of what you sort of expected a quarter ago, was that just the rate of Via-3 expenditures and was there also some incremental STC work in there that drove that?
Shawn Duffy
Management
Sure. So Rich this is Shawn. I think a couple of things as we did have some acceleration of ViaSat-3 activities in the quarter and have started to sort on some of the STC work as well. The other part of it, we had a fantastic award quarter in the government, Mark mentioned that in the script. However, some of those work came literally in the last week, so there is some timing differences on some of the shipments and fulfillment of some of those orders, but very strong performance overall.
Rich Valera
Analyst
Great. And then just with respect to the STC work, you mentioned, I think Mark success based several times which would seem to suggest that you have won some business, and I guess you have disclosed Qantas, but does that suggest that you have actually won business that has yet to be disclosed, this work you’re doing on STCs at this point?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes, so we have some cases, we have ongoing program for additional STCs, for instance with EL AL Airlines, that’s one. And then we also have some early authorizations that precede actual contract awards.
Rich Valera
Analyst
Okay. Is there anything you can say just about your pipeline of in-flight wins, the potential there, or any sort of more color on your recent activities there?
Mark Dankberg
Management
It’s really hard to say until we actually have a contract signed, but we’re -- the think I mentioned is we’re in multiple detailed negotiations with several airlines. So we’re optimistic, but we don’t have anything to report right now.
Rich Valera
Analyst
Got it. And the Eutelsat JV, I guess it’s expected to close I think within this current quarter, and I’m assuming that’s not contemplated in your -- the sort of guidance you laid out for fiscal 2017; is that correct?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Just the Eutelsat JV?
Shawn Duffy
Management
So the timing of it, we definitely have that based into our outlook and [indiscernible] at closing. We’re in that kind of final phases as some of the closing conditions, and I think we’re estimating that coming in the next few months.
Rich Valera
Analyst
So is that baked into the outlook that you put forth?
Shawn Duffy
Management
It is.
Rich Valera
Analyst
And can you say how much incrementally that’s expected to contribute from an EBITDA perspective or revenue perspective?
Shawn Duffy
Management
Yes, I would say it’s probably a little bit early to shape that. I think that couple of things you will see when we definitely include a little bit of additional SAT investments into next year for some adds as we start to launch the retail service. But it’s probably pretty early to say, I don’t think it’s going to be a significant next year impact though.
Rich Valera
Analyst
Great and sorry just one final one from me, Markjust the BATS [ph], the Link 16 seems like it’s a pretty significant new form factor I would say for Link 16 clearly, and with potential for I think much higher volumes, anything you could say in terms of the potential sort of longer-term production value of that program?
Mark Dankberg
Management
It’s not really dependent on how lively adapted it is, and I think we will learn a lot more over the course of fiscal 2017 to be a little early to speculate. But we’ve invested in it and our customers have invested in it as well because we think it would be big and impactful, but it would be good to wait a couple of quarters before we speculate on the total value.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Andrew DeGasperie with Macquarie. Your line is now open.
Andrew DeGasperie
Analyst · Macquarie. Your line is now open.
Thanks for taking my questions. First could you may be expand on the subscriber trends as well as your ARPU jump it certainly seems like you added 10,000 net adds even though your satellite beam just filled up, I’m just trying to figure out what drove that. And secondly on the Eutelsat joint venture, could you may be comment if you could use that satellite or that joint venture for potential expanding your Ka-band connectivity, seems like connectivity market there. Thanks.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes on the consumer service basically we’ve been kind of describing over the last year a number of things we’re doing sort of to optimize the performance and some of that involves on the ARPU side is higher value plans and also the additional services. So for instance we recently introduced this Boost 25 which allows us subscribers to pay an additional monthly fee and get PK rates in the 25 megabits per second range, we’re close to the 12 megs that we advertise otherwise. That’s a relatively new promotion that’s been pretty popular. So that helps accounts for the ARPU. On the subscriber side especially as we become more predictable and systematic about how we can acquire subscribers, we’ve been doing investing more and more things to sort of groom or refine the satellite capacity to create more subscriber spots in markets where we can do that partly by moving either making some changes to the operational timers on the satellite or upgrading some of the infrastructure or regenerating some of how we allocate bandwidth. That’s what created the opportunity for us to grow in net adds. We don’t really expect we don’t expect that, nobody should expect that type of net add growth to continue each quarter. I think from here we’ll probably fluctuate in low thousands; it could be up or down over the next probably of course over the next fiscal year. On the Eutelsat JV and Ka-band mobile, yes we actually have already announced roaming agreements with Eutelsat where we each can have platforms will roam on the other satellite networks, until that does already in the work even before the JV.
Andrew DeGasperie
Analyst · Macquarie. Your line is now open.
Got it. And secondly can you may be walk us through the milestones that are left on ViaSat-2 regarding testing or manufacturing. I mean manufacturing seems to be almost done but may be just let us know what the calendar looks like from now on to sort of seven months before launch?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes just few months basically final integration which is pretty close to done from then there will be main environmental testing which is vibration testing, terminal testing, that consumer testing which is really the main thing that are left before launch.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley. Your line is now open.
Mike Crawford
Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Mark, last week you used Chicago airhub as an example capacity and bandwidth availability. And I was wondering if you could walk us through that and I think you said, you had about 1 gigabit per second bandwidth over Chicago Maryland, what do you think would be your effective bandwidth capacity over there once ViaSat-2 is fully operational?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay, so yes so what Mike is referring to fair values? One big issues that we see in the in-flight connectivity market we have been doing with the airlines is that when you think about things like what the total data rate per aircraft, you have to think about how those airplanes for one or more carriers will converge on hub market in Chicago is important as an example because it’s has multiple airlines. So as an example somebody, example I described in that situation was if you had 100 airplanes coming into a single airport you’re advertising 70 megabits per second per airline that’s going to require hundreds or gigabits of capacity of all those airplanes were using that and with bandwidth all of this in time. So and the point we want to make that’s really reflects on the concept of capacity against which is how much capacity can you bring into an individual market. And so the big thing about Ku-bands not being satellites in particular especially going ahead is that we have relatively small beams for those small beams allow us to discriminate and have the beam that covers Chicago is different than the beam that covers Dallas or Atlanta or New York or Boston and that’s not true for either broadband conventional satellites or these Ku-band spot beam satellites or even the Global Express Ku-band satellite that has very large beams only five or six covering the whole country. So, what we said is we already have about a gigabit or more capacity in the Chicago area and with ViaSat-2 we would see probably close to tripling that I believe pull that particular area similar things you can say about Dallas or Atlanta and that’s really that thing we’re trying to get at is capacity against which allows you to deliver lot of bandwidth per plane, lot of planes conversions.
Mike Crawford
Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is now open.
Okay, thank you. Also your own 476 in strong commercial aircraft now that does not include your yonder network more the -- just sounds endeavor where you’re putting on great terminals on high value government aircraft. Can you put any numbers on how many of those other business aviation and government aircraft you’re serving?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes, I mean we’re well over a 1,000 in combined aircraft and that’s been -- and that’s growing pretty well.
Mike Crawford
Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is now open.
Over 1,000 combined including the 476.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes, that’s correct, yes; we’re well over into the 1,000. I’m not go into much more detail beyond that it’s well over 1,000.
Mike Crawford
Analyst · B. Riley. Your line is now open.
Okay. And then back to the tactical radios, is the ASP is high as $25,000 per radio like that or is that something that would come down if you are talking tens of thousands of units of volumes versus may be just something for just more expeditionary and special forces?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes that’s I would say we will figure that out as we get into production that’s probably not going to be that high, we are not making tens of thousands it will be lower than that. It’s still a big aggregate market.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Chris Quilty with Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Shawn I just wanted to get a clarification for adjusted EBITDA, your definition of it does that include or exclude the R&D spending for ViaSat-3?
Shawn Duffy
Management
Our reported numbers include the spend.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Okay. And I think Mark said $100 million next year which is both ViaSat-3 and some of the STC work or is that just ViaSat-3?
Shawn Duffy
Management
No that’s ViaSat-3 plus it’s actually R&D work for commercial aero. But as you noted, it could have some acceleration that it could grow.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Got it. And so is that STC work they get part of the delta from last quarter, I think you said ViaSat-3 R&D spending would be up $40 million in 2017 and now it’s $100 million, so it’s a pretty big jump?
Shawn Duffy
Management
Yes I would say that that -- I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the largest part, I would say there are some acceleration of the ViaSat-3 and as Mark mentioned that is kind of heavier year into next year and then there is some incremental, I would say probably the other portion is STC may be two-thirds, one-thirds.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Got it. And not that anybody cares about quarterly earnings but could you share any kind of progression of what that R&D spend looks like throughout the year?
Shawn Duffy
Management
Yes it’s probably going to be starting to already ramp into Q1 and be pretty consistent for the year may be slightly above in Q4. But it’s really going to be based on some of those timing items but we get on pretty consistent throughout the year.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Okay. And does obviously that all falls in the critical networks, does that STC work also fall in that segment?
Shawn Duffy
Management
Yes, it does.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Okay. On the aviation business can you give us an idea of what the backlog of aircraft you currently have and tied into that, what’s your current ability to install aircraft and how has that been mostly improving over time?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay. So right now the lot of the aircraft that we are installing on is more and more than getting to be new deliveries as opposed to retrofits. Some of the rate at which we’re installing is really a function of what those aircraft deliveries are but it’s going to be airlines. Airlines are providing -- not airlines, the individual aircraft to be upgraded. But more and more we’re seeing them the new deliveries, the ability to install aircraft it is going up a lot mostly because of the success we’re having we have a lot of interest amongst MROs who are eager to do that work. And so we would have more installation facilities available then we’re employed sort of at the peak than we’re doing both United and JetBlue aircrafts.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Sorry.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay, Chris.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
No other things. So you don’t do any of the installs yourselves that’s either done by the OEM or it’s done at the MRO level; is that true on your government side also?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Since we’re in the government side, we don’t really -- we don’t use commercial MROs unless we tend to use integrators L-3 is a good example. We do a lot of work with L-3 as far as the integration and installation of the equipment.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Got it. And I wouldn’t bring it up like you brought it up first fiscal 2018 since 2016 is in the books you got to have a couple of years of forecast out there. Two questions regarding how we should model the consumer sub growth. Number one should we expect that as you increase the data speeds and data caps associated with ViaSat-2 that ViaSat-1 will see some subscriber attrition or was the -- you’re previously stated capacity of 900,000 subs on ViaSat-1. Did that incorporate expected step-ups in the service plans?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay. So just on the ViaSat-1 thing basically what we expect to do, when we have ViaSat-2 satellite is to offer planned in-services that allocate more bandwidth per subscriber than we currently do. And so those plans will also be made available to ViaSat-1 subscribers who might choose to adapt to those plans. And so we’d expect that the number -- the absolute number of subscribers on ViaSat-1 will probably go down and that the yield on ViaSat-1 will go down a little bit as well. So think about yield being sort of absolute revenue per satellite. But the combined of the two ViaSat-1 and ViaSat-2 is going to grow pretty meaningfully. We have lot of that will be determined by the specific plans that we offered will give more guidance on that. So you’ll get sort of one of the ways to think about it the effect is when we talk about our total satellite services revenue now, we talk about like over 90% of it is on ViaSat-1 compared to any WildBlue-1. But actually ViaSat-2 has more than 90% of bandwidth so that means that the older satellites are really some sense over producing in terms of their relative contribution to bandwidth and we expect to see some of that with ViaSat-1 to especially at the beginning. So those are the factors that enter in, we’re not really going to give more explicit guidance yet until we start coming up with more definition of what the service plan to be.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Got it. But it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that even accounting for a churn on ViaSat-1, the high growth on ViaSat-2, could allow you to get back to sort of 50,000 net adds a quarter that you peaked that on ViaSat-1 when it was run in lean?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes, we actually did, I think we did 100,000 installs a quarter peak on ViaSat-1. And I think we’ll do -- at least that low or better at the peak of ViaSat-2. So we see very good growth rates ahead and that will get to grow the total number of subscribers pretty significantly and ultimately what you’d expect would be that there is sort of an equalization of the revenue yield on a per unit basis. If you think about okay we allocate X number of kilobits per second or megabits per second per subscriber, we’d end up with comparable types of allocations on both satellites, not it will I think as we gotten more and more refined as geographical nuances we offer different plans in different places and those had different yields but if you think about ultimately the yield of each satellite in terms of dollars per megabit would converge overtime but because ViaSat-2 is twice the megabit it would have twice the revenue of ViaSat-1 and ultimately that‘s really the source of competitive advantage and improvement.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Make sense. One final question or may be request is I know you’ve given your forecast leverage of getting up to about 3.5 times. And regardless of how I try to model I can’t see to get that leverage up that high I’m off by about a turn, which either means my denominator is not big enough or my numerator is too big and with the R&D spend, it looks like the numerator will come down. But would it be possible with the guidance you’ve given for the ViaSat-3 spend perhaps give it a more granular breakdown of what you’re going to be spending on the satellite, the gateway infrastructure, the launch and insurance piece of that and the capitalized interest just to make sure we get the total CapEx spend size correctly?
Mark Dankberg
Management
I think we’ll consider that, we don’t have detail on that. I would say one thing, we gave in terms of total investment, cash investment, we gave a breakdown of that last quarter, so one thing I would say it hasn’t really changed very much, what’s happened -- the thing that’s happened is that we’re still working on especially the accounting treatment of what’s R&D and what’s capitalized. And like I said the things that tend to be R&D expense are things -- the things that aren’t flight hardware. So that line we’re refining and those tend to be expenses that are earlier in the program and that’s why we’ve seen increase -- in fact increase in R&D for FY 2017 over 2016 it’s not really total cost of the program that’s grown, it’s really has to do with the timing of the R&D expense and the classification of the expense. Do you want to clarity that a little bit Shawn?
Shawn Duffy
Management
Yes. sure and I can just kind of just switch back to one of the questions that was asked earlier, just to clarify last quarter we talked about the incremental R&D going up about $40 million to next year. When Mark and we were talking about the total investments of $100 million, that’s the total amount not the incremental but just wanted to clarify that.
Chris Quilty
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Got it. And I think just certainly you could say that a big portion of that was the STC and success-based wins.
Mark Dankberg
Management
The big part of that was the ViaSat-3 R&D expense. So we had 77-ish million dollars in R&D expenses this year that goes up by around 50% for next year in the 115-ish range and little less than 100 of that or basically devoting our R&D budget primarily to ViaSat-3, so that’s big part -- very big part of that is ViaSat-3 expenses, R&D expenses for pre-buy activities and then there is within that close to 100 there is also just sort of variable estimates, so what we will do for success-based arrow.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Spinola with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Andrew Spinola
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Hey thank you. I think that last little bit clarified the guidance for the most part for me but I wanted to just ask one more specific question on SG&A it was up a lot this year, it bounced around the prior year. Can you give us any color, can we expect a smaller increase this year because I think that might be consistent with the guidance you are giving, so may be that would help clarify things a little?
Shawn Duffy
Management
Yes so couple of things to keep in mind for this year. One is last year in FY 2015 we called it percent, a percent of the Q2 Loral settlement about $17 million went to contract SG&A, so that kind of gives you a year-over-year performance. And then I think if you look out to next year, I mean we’re going to -- we will see some normalized growth in growth in our business and some of that growth can also be time based on the timing of [indiscernible] closure as well.
Andrew Spinola
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Okay. And just to clarify because the questions just keeps coming back to us, are you reiterating the guidance that you gave for fiscal 2017 EBITDA or are you just sort of stepping away from that to giving us more a general guidance, I mean how should we think about that?
Mark Dankberg
Management
So we’re trying not to be too explicit on the guidance pretty clearly. I think actually if you were to sort of reconstruct it both ways, I think what you will find is things haven’t really changed very much except for the amounts. So thing that has really changed is the amount of R&D associated with ViaSat-3 that’s the main thing if you were to attack it from sort of what did we describe last quarter, and then, our outlook looks like the incremental ViaSat-3 specific R&D expense you should get the ballpark pretty close to the same places.
Andrew Spinola
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Perfect thank you and on a higher level Mark that the FSS industry is come under a quite bit of stress in a last six to nine months probably not to your surprise but you’re about to pour a lot of CapEx into ViaSat-3 to sort of go after this very industry. And I’m just wondering when you look at everything that’s going on does that anything that happen change your view of the opportunity specific to you or do you think it’s specific to the industry. And as sort of corollary to that are you at all surprised by what seems to be a lack of last two city of demand here I mean the pricing seems to be going down and always see a revenue decline does that surprising to you at all.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay, so I mean that sort of whole investment pieces here is that we’re not doing incremental things we’re doing order of magnitude things. So the part I would say is not super surprising people go from one or two gigabit per second satellite to 7 or 10 or 15 and don’t find a lot of growth because satellite bandwidth pricing has been so high, the so long that there is a lot of catching up so we went to 140 gigabits of ViaSat-1 and we’re going to double that for ViaSat-2 and triple for ViaSat-3 so that means is the amount of bandwidth we can give relative to others is like the factor of 10 to a 100 different. And we think that’s what sort of setting expectations in the market what bandwidth pricing are to be that the way I describe it if you go back a little bit. I’d say people in the industry sort of cap ViaSat-1 as an outlier based on in the U.S. it’s only for consumer broadband, it doesn’t really reflect what’s going to happen in the rest of the world. And then so ViaSat-2 expand that coverage with ViaSat-3 we should be everywhere and we -- I mean we are seeing a lot of interest for bandwidth price at the levels that we can with those satellites. So there is notion that there is no elasticity demand or not much I think it’s really just a question of what if that price how sensitive people are to price and that’s where it’s gone back to the S curve being if you go back to somebody that’s supplying on an airplane and say hey the cost of bandwidth went down by 65%. I’m going to make your inside Wi-Fi 65% better they probably not going to very excited about that so, it’s so far away from what’s needed. But when you said okay, I’m going to give you streaming video at approximate price, definitively get peoples interest and that’s just reflects the big difference in bandwidth productivity that’s been our investment, this is all along. We certainly we feel like it’s playing out the way we thought. Does that answer your question or is that.
Andrew Spinola
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Yes, it does exactly and I wanted to ask does that extend to the government market I mean traditionally the government market has been a little different than the other data markets almost exclusively Ku-band. How do you -- do you think that market is an opportunity for you and will it take a lot longer because the DoD moves slower or how do you think about that market?
Mark Dankberg
Management
So, one it is happening in the government market and what happened in the government market is we thought out had on the Ku-band side where we were basically replacing Ku-band on mobile -- Ku-band sort instead of L-based band, so a lot of UI cap or nothing and so that give him a big lift one of the things, we start talking about is almost two years ago when we starting doing the Ka/Ku demonstration was well when you start putting Ka-band instead of Ku-band another whole level and so who that’s a big part of what’s driving government results now. But we think we’re really only in the early stages at that places where we are getting the most traction are the places where it’s been most difficult to get connectivity at all, that’s in the mobile market. We see really good growth ahead there and I would say we’re seeing indications of that success we’ve had in airborne markets to extend [indiscernible] markets. So we’re really bullish on that. It’s absolutely happened in the government business as well.
Andrew Spinola
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
One last question from me are you any closer to either securing or identifying additional capacity for the Eutelsat JV in Europe? Thanks.
Mark Dankberg
Management
There is nothing in terms of closing the JV and we are working very -- working closely with our Eutelsat partners substantially that custom vertical end up with a joint statement on what our plans for there once we reach closer on the agreement.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Michael French with Drexel Hamilton. Your line is now open.
Michael French
Analyst · Drexel Hamilton. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon. I have quick one to start with onto the STC for the A320, does that also apply to the A321, the reason I ask it’s pretty much the same plane that applies more passengers on particularly on popular business routes like New York to Chicago?
Mark Dankberg
Management
You got me on that one, I would guess it doesn’t but I’m not going to answer that one.
Michael French
Analyst · Drexel Hamilton. Your line is now open.
Okay. And Rick is traveling, he’s probably on A321 is big.
Mark Dankberg
Management
It’s pretty much.
Michael French
Analyst · Drexel Hamilton. Your line is now open.
Okay. And I can move on, you mentioned the take rates that your competitors are seeing on the Ku side with on the play and I agree it’s not very competitive 15 box there is not a lot you can do but they’ve been specific as you know they are in the single-digits six, seven seats a plane. Can you give us more detail on the take rates you’re seeing?
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes so I think we definitely see variance in take rates depending on the rationale that applies to city tiers time and again. The thing that we’re really excited about or airline partners are really excited about are on really valuable competitive routes especially cross-country routes, we are seeing on some aircrafts, you see more mobile devices and passengers. So that’s indicative of the level, there is over 100% penetration relative to the passengers and that’s I think some of our airline customers are seeing that’s a really good way to differentiate their price. And so one thing we’re doing is we’re working with them to help promote awareness of it and to get remove friction and get more people on especially like for JetBlue where the service is and I think JetBlue is in the past commented that they see take rates close to 40% I think fleet wide. So that would be -- that would average out over the shorter types and the longer types in different times of day but those are numbers that are -- we don’t look at them as a endpoint, we look at them as and I think JetBlue gives the same way as that’s really a good starting point for us to grow, so it’s a pretty striking difference on the take rates on other in-flight Wi-Fi systems.
Michael French
Analyst · Drexel Hamilton. Your line is now open.
Right, right. That is great. Okay. And then shifting onto the defense side on the BATS-D, what would you think in terms of the timing of that, if it’s going to become a program of record what should we think about in terms of the timing and I think it goes in that direction would there necessarily be a competitor involved or could that be something where you are sole sourced?
Mark Dankberg
Management
I think it goes into production; it will be up as a sole source since we developed the product using our technology. And what we said, we’re aiming for is that first production program by the end of this year. And I don’t, we’re not going to see end of 1000 to start with but I think we’re aiming for and our customers are aiming for to put us in the hands of people make sure that provides the desired capability operationally within a fewer to extrapolate that out that’s where the markets could really be.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Matt Robison with Wunderlich. Your line is now open.
Matt Robison
Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is now open.
Hi thanks for taking my question. Mark do you think on the business and government aircraft, do you think that can keep pace with the commercial in terms of numbers?
Mark Dankberg
Management
No, we -- I think the commercial market is probably bigger I mean we’re looking at tens of thousands of commercial airplanes in the global fleet that are tens versus thousands of government per aircraft. If we get into the Rotary wing and others then it becomes interesting but I think that’s kind of an order magnitude difference in the total addressable market between the two. But the government market demands are really high and the service level agreements are very -- they are very demanding. And so the value of the government aircraft is generally quite a bit higher than that for commercial aircraft on a per plane basis.
Matt Robison
Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is now open.
Yes, I was asking about government plus business but I forget I get the point it seems like right now the value is quite comparable between commercial and the rest.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Government, I say right now our government mobile broadband business shows up in our government segment. And the commercial shows up in the satellite services segment but the government business on a per aircraft basis is probably more valuable.
Matt Robison
Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is now open.
Yes everything about the business because there is still pretty good chunk of revenue away from consumer broadband and commercial that’s coming into that satellite services business it seems.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Yes, that’s under the general aviation portion.
Matt Robison
Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is now open.
Yes, Shawn what do you expect to have for tax rate in 2017?
Shawn Duffy
Management
So, probably the best way to think about it with the R&D credit extension is just may be around $8 million or so of potential R&D credits and then just take the income at the statutory rate.
Matt Robison
Analyst · Wunderlich. Your line is now open.
And you call it 35% for the statutory rate?
Shawn Duffy
Management
It’s probably little closer to 40.
Operator
Operator
I’m showing no further questions in queue at this time. I’d like to turn the call back to Mark Dankberg for closing remarks.
Mark Dankberg
Management
Okay, good. Thanks and appreciate everybody’s attendance on today’s call and look forward to speaking again next quarter.
Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This concludes the program and you may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.