Earnings Labs

Viasat, Inc. (VSAT)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 9, 2018

$58.07

-1.01%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to ViaSat’s Fiscal Year 2018 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. And I would now like to introduce your host for today’s call, Mr. Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Dankberg.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Okay, thanks. Good afternoon, everybody and welcome to ViaSat’s earnings conference call for our third fiscal quarter of 2018. So I am Mark Dankberg, Chairman and CEO and I’ve got with me Rick Baldridge, our President and Chief Operating Officer; Shawn Duffy, our Chief Financial Officer; Robert Blair, General Counsel; Bruce Dirks, our Treasurer; and Paul Froelich in Corporate Development. So, before we start, Robert will provide our Safe Harbor disclosure.

Robert Blair

Analyst

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. That said, back to you Mark.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Okay. So we will be referring to slides that are available over the web and I will start with highlights and then Shawn will discuss the consolidated and segment of our financial results. Then I will come back and go into some depth on our residential broadband, in-flight government businesses and we will review our outlook and take questions. So, the first highlight is that ViaSat-2 is ready for service. We anticipate launching the service region by region starting as early as next week with national coverage planned for the end of this month. We will feature unlimited plans nationwide with the highest speeds available in high demand markets. Test marketing of the unlimited plans has gone well and I will discuss that in some more detail later. We have been anticipating a significant ramp in in-flight connectivity and that’s underway. In the third quarter, we entered production service with Qantas in Australia using our second generation platform and we began testing service on both new and retrofit aircraft with American Airlines. We have signed contracts for 92 additional aircrafts from existing airline customers during the third quarter and that brought our total of in-service and under contract airplanes to just over 1,500. Then today, we announced a new direct contract with the United Airlines for over 70 additional aircraft, including their new 737MAX fleet. And just to be sure, those new aircraft are in addition to the 92 planes that were signed during the third quarter, so that puts us closer to 1,600 total now and it’s also significant, because United was the only other airline besides JetBlue where we were originally in a subcontract situation. Now, we are really pleased to be working directly with both JetBlue and United. And we had another very strong quarter in government systems. Revenue was up 9% and adjusted EBITDA was up 20% in the third quarter on a year-over-year basis. Orders were strong at about $200 million in the third quarter and that also drove backlog to a record for government systems at just over $700 million. We see good growth prospects across all the government major product lines, which as a reminder were enabled by significant R&D investments that we have made in prior periods and we will give more information on that later as well. So, Shawn, just do that financial part.

Shawn Duffy

Analyst

Thanks Mark. Overall, our third quarter results were in line with our expectation based on the business drivers we have discussed last call. Looking forward, we are well-positioned on multiple fronts. Orders were up 23% year-over-year, with record backlog of $1.1 billion. We are about to launch ViaSat-2 services and we are beginning to transition to lower payload R&D expenses on the ViaSat-3 program, which will further support P&L and capital flow improvement. Turning to the quarterly P&L, revenues grew year-over-year just slightly despite the capacity constraints we have to contend with ahead of the ViaSat-2 commercial service launch. Let’s recall that our last year’s Q3 also included $6.8 million of Loral settlement proceeds. EBITDA reflected the impacts of the elevated expenditures associated with bringing ViaSat-2 into service, gearing up for strong IFC growth, flow-through of the year-over-year Loral settlement impact and the continuing R&D expenditures on next-gen technologies. However, I do want to point out that while our Q3 R&D levels were up year-over-year as expected, we do see a decrease of $6 million on a sequential quarter basis as we begin transitioning to the capital portion of the ViaSat based program. So, looking at our segment results, in Government Systems, Q3 was marked with nice growth across broad product service portfolio. Revenues were up 9% year-over-year reaching $182 million and adjusted EBITDA grew at double that rate of 20% year-over-year to $48 million. Product and service margins were up significantly more than offsetting a $9 million combined increase in R&D initiatives, which included elevated proposal efforts that help secure the $199 million in new orders bringing segment backlog to a record level of over $700 million. And remember, this excludes future awards anticipated under our ID/IQ contract such as the $350 million silicon agreement we have recently announced…

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Okay, thanks, Shawn. So, I will start with our government segment. Once again, we had excellent performance in Government Systems across multiple product and service offerings. The products and services are steady and expanding portfolio of Link 16 tactical datalinks, information assurance and cyber appliances and software and narrowband and broadband satellite terminal products and services. We use this chart on the last call as it helps isolate the seasonality of the government business. You can see the year-over-year revenue growth on the left, that’s attributable to the products and services that I just mentioned. On the right, you can see EBITDA has been growing a little bit faster even taking into account higher R&D and other selling costs we are incurring to continue positioning us for the future. We ended the quarter with record backlog over $700 million after strong awards of about $200 million during the quarter. One of our growth strategies is to increase our addressable market by migrating products that have been very effective in early adopter organizations, such as Special Forces, to the mainstream Army, Navy and Air Force. During the third quarter, we executed a $350 million ID, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, or ID/IQ contract with Special Forces that helps illustrate the demand for products and services that are generally ViaSat unique non-developmental items as opposed to programs of record. Just to be sure, we only include firm purchase orders when received under that contract in our new awards and backlog. As those products and services are adopted by other users, we are also aiming to execute similar types of contracts with those organizations. We are having success with our migration strategy. The Department of the Army recently filed a report with Congress on their tactical network modernization strategy. The report emphasizes the Army…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley. Your line is now open.

Mike Crawford

Analyst

Thank you. And in airborne mobile what percent of united fleet you now have and how is that carrier going to manage, do you believe that carrier will manage passenger in-flight experience expectations.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Okay. I think we had around 262 or 280 maybe or in 280…?

Shawn Duffy

Analyst

On the airplane.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Yes. 280 on the United roughly out of close to say 400 to 450 I think in their domestic mainline fleet, that’s…

Shawn Duffy

Analyst

Could be a little higher than that and closer to 300 of United planes.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Okay. So this will add to our proportion of that. I think United is still – but we don’t want to speak for United in terms of what their fleet wide planning is. I think they will speak for themselves in terms of how they are going to come and deliver the services through the course of the fleet throughout the fleet. I think our understanding is in general they are excited about the capabilities that we offer and I think you will see that they will more – probably more likely to try to figure out and leverage them to support them.

Mike Crawford

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And in Europe you have a dispute with the regulator there Ofcom regarding Inmarsat’s use of spectrum that was supposed to be for satellite mobile phones and etcetera – I m sorry our European aviation network where they have this 300 tower build out and so A, what do you think on your prospects in regards to that fight and then B, if that purpose without spectrum is able to be used for that purpose I mean what would you be able to use your Ka-band spectrum for 5G service in Europe?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Okay. Let’s open it up for that question. So basically our position is that the application that the EAN application will deliver something like 99% of all the bandwidth that’s delivered to passengers on airplanes through ground network as opposed to satellite that the intent was that the ground network augment the satellite not that it basically be the network and with the satellite providing a tiny part that’s our position I think will be about I think it will be resolved on the merits. So the argument probably on the jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis, I think our understanding is that there are already at least a couple of important countries that haven’t approved EAN and that where we are contesting it in others. And I think it will be resolved on the merits, but arguments pretty straightforward. I think that the – there is a difference in taking Ka-band spectrum and applying it to 5G networks because Ka-band spectrum is generally applied, this is the difference between what’s called fixed satellites or mobile satellite service. Fixed satellite service bandwidth is only allocated to operators at specific orbital locations whereas MSS spectrum like S-band and L-band is more omni-directional. And so it’s not really practical currently to allow each of the FSS operators to use MSS spectrum on the ground. There is really no protocol for doing that.

Mike Crawford

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And then last question also in Europe is any update on negotiations with Eutelsat?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Yes. I think both we and Eutelsat are working away on the agreements that would result in ViaSat-3 JV. We are not done. I think we are continuing to make progress on it.

Mike Crawford

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Rich Valera with Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Rich Valera

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Mark, something you are talking about the, it sounds like you are expecting at this point of what you know a bit lower capacity on ViaSat-2 260 I guess versus first the original 300, so I know you had before said you thought you could kind of bridge to your original financial projections even if the capacity was a bit lower, can you talk about maybe how you would bridge to your original financial projections if 260 turns out to be the number. And then what do you think the odds are that you can still come up with a fix that would get that backup closer to the original capacity? Thanks.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Okay. So let’s start with the second part first. There are still maneuvers that we can do with the satellites that may resolve the problem. We are working with manufacturer of Boeing and with the insurers to make sure that we understand the situation and that when we take those actions they are appropriate. And I would say, it’s not often a distinct future, it’s not something we are going do immediately either, but I think that there is still – we can’t really put a probability around what the outcome will be and the outcome is not binary, it could end up improving the situation, it could fix it completely. It’s not inconceivable that it could make things a little bit worse that’s where we are trying to do to make sure that anything we do is prudent. In terms of how we can work with the – work with the capacity that we have and still achieve our regional financial results, one of the things that we have said multiple times is basically when we intend to bring this capacity into service that will put it in a configuration that maximizes its revenue potential and that’s not exactly the same as the situation that maximizes the capacity. So, if you think about how you maximize capacity you sort of have to think of it as sort of spread that capacity fairly evenly over the whole coverage area and part of the point of having flexibility is to use capacity in the places where it has the most demand. So, we have basically – and the satellite has a great deal of flexibility. So, what we will intended to do was to allocate capacity to those places that have the most demand that makes it a little more concentrated…

Rich Valera

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Got it. And is potential insurance claims any part of that as well?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Yes, there are. So basically one thing we have notified the insurers that there is an anomaly on the satellite that we will try to – we are working with them to quantify what that anomaly is we would be entitled to coverage as a partial loss for the satellite. And we also think that in the end that the insurers will like us would want to try to fix it that will evaluate those risks and then we will make a decision.

Rich Valera

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Got it. That’s helpful. Thanks Mark. And then just with respect to the in-flight obviously very nice backlog now. And you have talked before about having a pretty aggressive ramp trajectory in terms of quarterly installs can you give us an update on how you think that might progress over the next two, three quarters?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

I don’t know if you want to give any, Rick, would you like to give any numbers or any color on that?

Rick Baldridge

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

No, there is two different things going on, because we are delivering to Boeing for line fit and then we are doing retrofits. And so our delivery schedule is ahead of the in-service schedules, but pretty much they start on a quarter-over-quarter basis you will see Q1 or Q4 had double, but it was in our Q3 I think those are numbers Shawn and then you will see Q1 double that, so it steps up pretty steeply until we get into summer and if the rate of growth slows down?

Rich Valera

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

I guess it would still take a few quarters that I still thought our your peak was going to be pretty well over 100 per quarter, is that still your thought at your sort of peak run rate?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

No, it will higher than that. It will be like…

Rich Valera

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Okay. Like 150, is that sort of the number or ballpark?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Yes. I think probably closer to 170. Shawn, I think it’s in the…

Shawn Duffy

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Yes. I think between 150 and 200, so 170 is good.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Yes, in that range and as we are adding more obviously that number is growing.

Rich Valera

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Great. And so and not to beat this one, but you think you might hit that in the next four quarters is that…?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Yes.

Rich Valera

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Got it, okay, that’s it for me. I will leave the floor. Thank you.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Thanks Rich.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ric Prentiss with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Ric Prentiss

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Good afternoon. And obviously exciting times as ViaSat-2 moves from launch to test the market, did a good job laying out a lot of your thoughts on market testing, help us understand maybe a little bit about the distribution channels were used, you have talked about maybe reducing the amount of bandwidth that goes to residential, how do you get out government mobility, obviously in fly you have got that handled, but just trying to think through how you are going to go to market to these different areas that are going to get bandwidth assigned to them?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Okay. So yes, just and actually one thing I didn’t talk about this in the first case residential distribution is still really important. We have mentioned in the past that we have been working on improving and expanding our residential distribution. And I think the steps on good things up there. Also one of things it’s important is that for about the last nine months we really have had very little direct to home TV distribution. And there is a good chance of that we will reengage with the new satellites a while. So those are things on the residential side. On the government side, essentially our distribution approach has been working directly with to configure this platforms, that is we have talked about for instance C-130s or Gulf streams. These are in government markets or specific types of ISR platforms. So one is to work with a lead on each platform in order to get qualified and say equivalent of the – it’s not exactly, but it’s the equivalent of getting qualified on that platform like an STC would be with the sponsor. And then we tend to go to other organizations that use those same platforms. So for instance Special Forces were are early adopters in C-130s or C-5s or C-17s – excuse me C-130s and C-17s. And then we have worked with other organizations on new platforms. And one of them for instance would be [indiscernible]. And then to go to different organizations that are users of those platforms. So it’s pretty much taken as a direct sales approach. These customers use our terminals and then they will buy services from us. We also have been working with ground organizations and as an example one of – again going back to this Army tactical networks modernization program, there is a lot of issues what’s called the T-program, when T-program was primarily a satellite program has very large terminals not on a bandwidth, that’s a really good example application for us to go into on the defense side. The another area I don’t want to talk about too much because we will talk about in more detail in a few weeks is Wi-Fi in emerging markets and there we have a couple of different distribution approaches that we are working with. One is a partner that provides current information think of it as information services in remote villages and those services are greatly enhanced and their markets greatly expanded by having connectivity along with that – those types of services. In terms of some other new markets, we have partners in enterprise who I think in the past we have mentioned on a range that we are working with Comcast as an example for a large quick serve chain, where we satellites could fill in sites that aren’t available to be served by their ground network as an example. We will expand other applications like that.

Ric Prentiss

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Okay. Obviously, not all subjects rated equal on this kind of new world as you mentioned higher ARPU ones, how are you thinking about reporting or educating the market then on kind of the type of subs you are getting and what we should think about from a modeling standpoint?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Okay. So I think on the residential side, we will continue to report ARPU. I think on the – we are still thinking about it when we have applications that are more shared and we’ll probably won’t do that until those applications become material. So, the thing for instance with in-flight connectivity at the current levels, it’s just not been a material part of our business, but as that backlog gets built out, it will be until we will come up with an appropriate mechanism for reporting it and giving investors and analysts a way to kind of value these relative approaches.

Ric Prentiss

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Okay. Also in the U.S., there has been a lot of discussions about the CAF II auction coming up in July, what are your views on that auction and what it might mean for competition or any interest from you guys as far as looking at what’s going on with the CAF II auctions?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Okay. So we have paid attention to the CAF auctions. There was at one point a movement to make them more technology neutral that was somewhat undermined by the bidding rules that allocated value to latency as an example relative to speed. We think that we are really interested in it. We will do – we will compete in the best way that we can given what the rules are and in the meantime through the adoption of our service plans and through studies like this when they came out from University of Indiana over the summer we are trying to demonstrate that a lot of customers really prefer higher speeds and more bandwidth to lower latency and when given the choice, but two of the CAF rules really fairly reflect that and we are constrained in what we can do.

Ric Prentiss

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Got it. And last from me is both Sprint and Softbank on their earnings calls recently were talking up OneWeb a little bit as possibly ultimately becoming a rural broadband solution. Can you just update us on your thoughts about OneWeb and how much bandwidth it actually brings and the ability to put that product into the market?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

So I think OneWeb in low-earth orbit systems are definitely interesting from a technology perspective. I think that we have been pretty consistent and haven’t really seen any facts to the contrary that one of the challenges with low-earth orbit system is the geographic distribution of bandwidth. And just from the amount of time we have spent on how we expect to use it with our satellites we think that geographic distribution is really important and it’s just like imagine that you are a cellular operator and you can’t really control the geographic distribution of your bandwidth that you have to fairly uniformly spread it over around the world. I mean, that’s definitely a disadvantage relative to people that can employ their assets in a more targeted way. So, what I think at the end is that while low-earth orbit systems will have lower latency than we would that we will be able to use our assets to deliver higher speeds and more bandwidth for a comparable cost and that ultimately that’s going to be more valuable for a lot of the markets that we are serving. We do know that some fraction of bandwidth did generally less than 10% is more latency sensitive and one of the other things that we are doing to try to serve that part of the market is to partner with other terrestrial services, where we can use hybrid approaches to deliver some combination of really high speeds and high volume of satellite, coupled with lower latency for those services that needed over terrestrial. I think we are going to compete well. I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game. So, we are not predicting the failure of OneWeb, I just think that it’s not going to bring an amount of bandwidth to the markets that we serve that’s going to disrupt our ability to compete in those markets.

Ric Prentiss

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks for your thoughts. That’s really great.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And 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.

Thanks. Shawn, I wanted to ask you about the accounting for these new ViaSat-2 plans with the 3-month promotion at a lower price, are you recognizing the revenue from those subscribers at the full rate from day one – and I guess – or as you – and then somehow amortizing that discount over time or what sort of the impact can we expect after the 3-month period from these new subscribers and did we see the ARPU boost from device it to subs in the current quarter?

ShawnDuffy

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Okay. So, couple dynamics happening there. So, when I would say that in general what you tend to see is kind of a blended effect. Those early price points are a little bit skewed lower based on some of those promotional and then we will see over time it skew upward, I would say that’s pretty – you should expect to see that and then when we look…

Andrew Spinola

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

So Shawn in other words we don’t amortize that discount, we let it show up in the period that that transaction occurs?

ShawnDuffy

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Yes, pretty much. That’s pretty kind of pretty much the end result that happens subject to some other considerations that we look at with the customer on contract, non-contract, but at the end of the day, that’s a pretty good approximation.

Andrew Spinola

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Okay. Just to sort of break it down, those 40,000 plus subs, you are not seeing the full impact of the price points that they will be stepped up to after the 3 months in the December quarter, is that fair?

ShawnDuffy

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Yes, I would say, that’s fair.

Andrew Spinola

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Okay. And the second question for me is if you are willing, could you maybe talk from a high level about the EBITDA trajectory of the commercial networks business from fiscal ‘18 to fiscal ‘19, i.e., what you are expecting from the step down of ViaSat-3 expenses and then maybe particularly also what uptick could you potentially expect from the aircraft terminals?

ShawnDuffy

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

So, I mean, I guess I would say without given a straight number is that if you look at the R&D tick down, we are going to see that tick down kind of quarter-over-quarter, all the way through to the end of the year. So, I think that if you look at a baseline R&D spend, so let’s say the percentage of revenues that we had early ‘17 we will see a pretty significant savings coming into ‘19 and then you did hit on the other driver to EBITDA next year is really around that commercial air terminal and that’s definitely going to contribute some additional increases. So, I think the piece of those we have talked about a little bit should be significant to next year. So, I think you could see a pretty significant improvement in EBITDA and we can give you guys some additional color to that as we head into next year or into next call.

Andrew Spinola

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Just to finish up on that point, the hardware that you ship is sold at a profit or is it breakeven?

ShawnDuffy

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

No, it’s certainly sold at a profit.

Andrew Spinola

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

It is. Alright, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Simon Flannery

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Great, thank you very much. Good evening. Mark, can you talk a little bit more about the broadband rollout with ViaSat-2, how are you thinking about your addressable market given the greater speeds and capacity here? Are you going to really address the same sort of target markets that you went to with ViaSat-1 or is there going to be an expansion in that footprint that you hit? And any color you could give us around the shaping of the broadband ads when does it turn positive and when does it really start ramping in your view as you all set to churn on your ViaSat-1 versus the ads on ViaSat-2 as you scale that up? And then Shawn just a clarification you talked about the margins in the initial quarter looking more like ViaSat-1 after a year and just to check the math, are we in that kind of 19%, 20% EBITDA margin range, is that the right ballpark? Thanks.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Okay. So let me start with the first two. Okay. First, in terms of target market, I think so with our approach to marketing I would say is we are working to become more granular, right. And I think that the best – best places for us to sell are for people who want to rely on the Internet more and more for video entertainment. So that’s where we are targeting people who want higher speeds, so that they can they can do video streaming and they can do enough of it, because they are using Netflix or some other similar service. So we would like to target people who are doing that, but we would also mostly like to target the people who are doing that and don’t have access to say 25 or 50 megabit per second cable. And so that means really trying to better understand the intersections in those two. And that would be I think just as an example. And I just use this because you have kind of bunch of it, but for instance, Greg Moffatt [ph], when he looks at each of the cable companies will look at what fraction of each cable company’s footprint overlaps different computing services. For instance how much of it is ADSL or how much of it is fiber to the node, how much is fiber to the home, right. And so what we are trying to do is to market more to those intersections. Those are the places where we are trying to initially match our supplier bandwidth to where we think there will be demand. Now, I think when you look at it from a macro perspective at things and we think about where do the speeds that we are marketing fit in the – so the overall speeds that are available in the U.S. And one of the things we showed in the past is 25 megabits is kind of in the right around the median speed in the U.S. maybe just a little bit worse than median. But when we started with ViaSat-1 12 megabit was kind of median speed and now we will have 50 and 100 megabit per second plans. So overall, from a speed perspective we think we are – we have increased our addressable market, but we are trying to do is be a little more precise in the way we do our actual advertising and promotions and in some other channels that we are trying to engage to better target those intersections.

Simon Flannery

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Okay.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

On the shape of ramp – I am sorry go ahead.

Rick Baldridge

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Yes, that’s the…

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Okay. So on the shape of the ramp, I think the main thing that we would try to get across and our thinking is that we are really looking at revenue growth trajectory as opposed to the subscriber growth trajectory. And part of that is we are trying to understand what the desirability is of the different plans. And there is definitely it’s not exactly linear, but there is certainly a proportional or fairly linear relationship between the speeds that we offer, the price of the plans and the amount of bandwidth that’s consumed by them. So think about it as we would have somewhat different yields, but if we can get a comparable yield that is dollars per gigabit by selling 100 megabit plans as opposed to 25 megabit plans, we would like to do that, alright. So that but because of the price points different that we just can’t as many of the 100 megabit one as 25. And so we are going to look at what that mix is. I think we learned a pretty fair amount from the test marketing, but we couldn’t test market 1,500 mega plans, because the satellite didn’t support those. So I think we are going to defer a little bit actual subscriber numbers until we get some experience with the actual marketing, with which we will start by the time we report next quarter, we have probably a full month of activity with all – with all the plans in all the markets.

Shawn Duffy

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Hey. And to your last question on that satellite services EBITDA, so that range was 19% to 20% looking at kind of the first full quarter or ViaSat-2 in service that’s a good range to start. And then we will increase sequentially each quarter from there.

Simon Flannery

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our net question comes from the line of Phil Cusick with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Phil Cusick

Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks. A little bit following up on Simon’s question for ViaSat-2 I like the unlimited plans, do you Mark expect to sell only unlimited going forward, how do you think about that?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Yes, that’s what the plan is. Clearly, there is a lot of demand for those. We can see that in the way people trade old plans even ones with either the soft caps or the very high caps for unlimited. That’s big part of what we are trying to understand is to be able to get a sense on the amount of bandwidth it takes to fulfill those on the price points and yields, but overall when you couple the unlimited with the video streaming management, it looks like a good way to go and that’s our plan going forward.

Phil Cusick

Analyst

Thanks. And then can you give us an update on ViaSat-3, what are you thinking at this point in terms of timing and capacity, anything changing?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

No, it’s – we are – the main thing that is reflected in the financials is that we are on that transition from testing, it’s basically engineering model testing and prototype testing to transitioning into building the flight hardware and we are getting more and more of the subsystems and modules into that. I think we have done a lot of testing on the pre-flight hardware, but basically in general for these satellite programs, the largest source of uncertainty is in the integration phase. So, that’s still ahead of us. And so that’s where we will really figure out what the deployment schedule is. We are also looking at different launch campaign options with the prospect of reducing the orbit raising time which was a big factor in ViaSat-2 in-service date. So right now, I think that the second half of 2020 is a reasonable range to think about for when that would come in service. In terms of the technical capabilities nothing has really changed. I mean, we have done a lot of – lots and lots of risk reduction integration testing and supply things still look really promising in terms of its technical and performance capabilities.

Phil Cusick

Analyst

And if you could – this is I know you are just testing the limited plans now on ViaSat-2 but if you could push yourself forward 3 years and think about what those ViaSat-3 plans might look like, how do you imagine those evolving?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

I think that’s clearly what people want – what we would expect is that we would be able to deliver those with more of them tending towards the higher speeds and probably being able to push up assuming market values risk that these plans are in some way more valuable or give us a bigger market whichever we need or increased the take rates, but we may end up with higher streaming speeds that go along with and you could think about moving the streaming speeds up a notch as an example as we do that as well. I think those are kind of the general trends.

Phil Cusick

Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we do have time for one last caller. And our next question comes from the line of Chris Quilty with Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.

Chris Quilty

Analyst · Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Shawn, thank you for that very detailed breakdown on the selling costs and whatnot, except I am bad at math, so can you guide me a little more specifically where you think the service margins will go once ViaSat-2 subs kick in, is it kind of like the 2014 level or better or little less?

Shawn Duffy

Analyst · Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.

So, what I would say is we wanted to kind of give you guys where we thought kind of first full quarter or our starting point was, because it’s not going to be as low as it was when we started ViaSat-1. And then I would say you should see it continues to increase quarter-over-quarter sequentially and I would expect just to be able to do better than we did on ViaSat-1 ultimately.

Chris Quilty

Analyst · Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.

Okay, got it. So, it looks like we are poised to get some double-digit Pentagon budget increases, Mark, is there any particular program or general area where you think you might be able to benefit disproportionately either because there was unavailable budget or think that might be money related?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.

I think that I would say that rather than just looking at the budget, I think that the things that are – it’s going to be most impactful for us. To go back and look at for instances Army tactical modernization report that the Army just filed I think about a week ago and that was really more focused on capability gaps. And I think that rather than thinking about it as okay people had more money to buy the things that they already buy from us. I think they are really looking at is taking the capabilities we have and clearing those gaps. And if we – if for instance the mainstream Army that we close several gaps, that means our market is going to be much bigger, it’s going to grow, things will do better than just by the growth in the budget, likewise if we could do similar things with certain Navy applications or Air Force applications. So I think that – that’s sort of a gating step is to deal with the – with the demand model and the capability gap model. I think that what we have seen is often the arguments when you feel those capability gaps are so compelling that it makes for that people find the budget one way or another. I think this make it a little easier to find the budget, but I think the big issue for us is really getting people to test and understand the functional value and performance value that we bring.

Chris Quilty

Analyst · Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.

Okay. And one final quick question on ViaSat-2 major component that I think is that the Trans-Atlantic for in-flight connectivity, do you feel like you have got orders in the book already where that reflects an element of the customers plans or source selection on ViaSat-2 or do you think any orders related to Trans-Atlantic are yet to come?

Mark Dankberg

Analyst · Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.

On the Trans-Atlantic, I think we have got some of them. I think that there is – there are more opportunities to come. But I think, we have got some that already tend to use. We know I mean I think you will see first Trans-Atlantic flights from some of our customers immediately once we bring up the arrow service, which should be to shortly after we bring up the residential service. And I will let those carriers talk about it, because I think they would like to make kind of a big deal about it, but we have already got, we have got customers that are returning on that already.

Chris Quilty

Analyst · Quilty Analytics. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes our Q&A session for today. So I would like to return the call to management for any closing remarks.

Mark Dankberg

Analyst

Okay. So I think that concludes our call for this afternoon. Thanks a lot everybody for your time and interest and look forward to talking to you again next quarter.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. And you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.