- Iridium Communications (NASDAQ:IRDM) is up 2.9% in premarket trading after beating on top and bottom lines in Q4 and guiding to steady service revenue growth in the coming year.
- Operational EBITDA of $51.8M grew 4% and beat an expected $49.5M.
- Breaking out $100.5M in revenue: Service revenue, $78.2M (up 2%); equipment, engineering and support revenue, $22.3M.
- Total billable subscribers grew 11% Y/Y and 1.8% sequentially to 739K, driven mainly by machine-to-machine and commercial voice customers.
- Commercial voice/data subscribers grew 4% to 354K, with an ARPU of $43 (down 9% mainly on one-time Q4 benefit); commercial machine-to-machine data ARPU of $16 (flat).
- Government business ended quarter with 60K subs, up 17%.
- The company guided for 2015 service revenue growth between 3% and 6%, and to full-year operational EBITDA of $230M-$240M, in line. It expects equipment revenue ($17.1M in Q4, up 8%) won't grow in 2015 as a strong dollar dampens commercial handset sales.
- Conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET.
- Press release