London, UK: 3 August 2012. Inmarsat plc the leading provider of global mobile satellite communications services,today provided the following information for the six months ended 30 June 2012.
- Total revenue $684m (2011: $683m)
- Inmarsat Global MSS revenue $367m up 1.4% (2011: 362m)
- EBITDA $381m (2011: $427m)
- EBITDA excluding LightSquared $332m (2011: $336m)
- Profit before tax $223m (2011: $255m)
- Interim dividend of 16.94 cents (US$), up 10%
- Strong growth in Maritime revenue, up 13%
- Over 30,000 FleetBroadband terminals installed
- Over 65,000 active IsatPhone Pro terminals
Inmarsat Group Limited - Second Quarter Highlights
- Total revenue $329m (2011: $359m)
- Inmarsat Global MSS revenue $189m up 4.2% (2011: $181m)
- Inmarsat Solutions revenue $205m (2011: $189m)
- Total EBITDA $176m (2011: $223m)
- MSS active terminals up 13%
Growth in our maritime data revenue resulted primarily from the impact of pricing initiatives, in particular as a result of the elimination (with effect from January) of volume discounts previously available for older services and the implementation of certain price changes (with effect from May) in relation to our FleetBroadband service. We continue to see strong take up of our FleetBroadband service. During the half year 2012, we added 4,305 FleetBroadband terminals, of which 2,295 were added during the second quarter. At the end of the half year we had more than 30,000 active FleetBroadband terminals. In addition, the migration of certain leasing business to our maritime sector also contributed to our maritime revenue growth.
Although customer migration from older maritime services continues to have a negative impact on our rate of revenue growth in the maritime sector, we believe that this effect is now more than offset by usage increases we have seen from our FleetBroadband subscribers and by the impact of the price changes we have implemented. Although maritime voice revenue was down year over year, this is largely due to the impact of voice price reductions implemented in April 2011 and the on-going effect of voice to email substitution that we record as data revenues.
Interest in our XpressLink service has continued to gain momentum following the appointment of a number of leading maritime communications specialists as dealers which has increased market awareness. XpressLink is now a highly competitive alternative to traditional VSAT services and we continue to believe that XpressLink will gain meaningful market traction during 2012.In our land mobile sector, while our BGAN and IsatPhone Pro services continue to attract new customer revenue to our network, this growth has been more than offset by the on-going decline in revenue from government users in Afghanistan. Lower revenue from Afghanistan, in connection with reduced military activity, remains a material headwind to our overall rate of growth in 2012. We estimate that Afghanistan and events in North Africa and Japan in the first half of 2011 contributed $18.2m more revenue year-over-year, compared to the first half of 2012. While revenue from North Africa and Japan has now largely normalised, our annualised land mobile revenue from Afghanistan remains material, but is expected to decline further in the remainder of the year.
Our IsatPhone Pro service continues to see strong subscriber take up. At the end of the quarter we had over 65,000 IsatPhone Pro subscribers, being the primary contributor to growth in our land voice revenues.
Aviation revenue growth for the first half was driven by the combination of strong take up and growth in revenue from our SwiftBroadband service, offset by lower usage from Swift 64 mainly due to lower military and government usage. In July, we announced the deployment of SwiftBroadband by two leading airlines in the Asia Pacific region to support in-flight passenger services. Leasing for the first half was in line with expectations. Lower revenue recorded as Other Income was primarily driven by lower revenue from LightSquared partially offset by increased equipment sales in relation to our IsatPhone Pro service. Growth in our Inmarsat Solutions division was primarily driven by recognition of new VSAT service revenues resulting from the acquisition of Ship Equip completed in April 2011, and by growth in our Inmarsat Government business unit, both primarily reported within Broadband and other MSS. Lower Inmarsat MSS revenue at the Inmarsat Solutions level was driven primarily by lower revenue from Afghanistan and lower event-related revenue year-over-year.
