At the same time, Iridium reported improving – but still loss-making – numbers for its full-year results.
For the full year, Iridium reported a net loss of $9.3 million, as compared with a net loss of $56.1 million for 2020 and $162.0 million for 2019.
CEO Matt Desch (pictured) said: “Iridium had another strong year in 2021 on the back of the best subscriber growth in company history. We achieved this growth even in the face of supply chain issues, while continuing to expand our product portfolio.”
Revenue was $614.5 million in the full year, up 5% on 2020, and fourth-quarter revenue was $155.9 million.
The company ended the quarter with 1,723,000 total billable subscribers, which compares to 1,476,000 for the end of 2020, and is up from 1,690,000 for the third quarter of 2021.
“Total billable subscribers grew 17% year-over-year, driven by growth in commercial IoT,” said the company.
Desch said that Iridium’s debt “is now within our forecasted target range”.
In the last decade he led Iridium through a $3 billion fund-raising that paid for a complete new satellite fleet, to replace that orbited by Motorola for the original Iridium company at the end of the last century.
The final 10 satellites in the 70-strong Iridium Next fleet, including in-orbit spares, went into operation three years ago.
Now, commercial service represents almost two-thirds of Iridium’s total revenue. The company describes its commercial customer base as diverse, including “markets such as maritime, aviation, oil and gas, mining, recreation, forestry, construction, transportation and emergency services”.
The company also provides what it calls enhanced mobile satellite services to the US government under a seven-year, $738.5 million fixed-price airtime contract signed in September 2019.
However, Iridium, as the pioneer of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite services – its craft orbit at less than 800km above the surface – will face increasing competition from newcomers such as Amazon’s Kuiper, OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink, as well as the European Union still unnamed project, announced this week.
