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Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Adrenaline who wrote (4233)	8/11/1998 12:40:00 PM
From: Rocket Scientist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

All: How about some analysis of Loral's 2nd Quarter results? First, it seems market reaction is negligible (Loral is down the same amount as GMH and IRIDF, for example). My personal reaction is slight disappointment: I'm surprised at the revenue trend which is flat (or distinctly negative when you eliminate intercompany sales.) Skynets reported revenues of 30M$ for the quarter seems low compared to projections of Readware and Valueline; coupled with statement that Telstar 4 and 5 are "fully booked" there's an implication that there won't be much revenue growth here until T6 is operable late this year. Comparing Q1 to Q2, it's hard to see any positive contribution of Orion to the top line either. Q1 to Q2 EBITDA before development costs is down too. In short, halfway through the year, we seem to be doing getting far less revenue than Readware's 1/98 projection or Valueline's 7/98 analysis (Valueline predicted 375M$ after intercompany eliminations vs 248M$ actuals.) So EBITDA is lower and net losses higher than (I) expected. Any thoughts??

To: Mr. Adrenaline who wrote (4233)	8/12/1998 3:20:00 AM
From: Reagan DuBose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

Mr. A: The 75KM diameter area is said to yield a minimum elevation angle (from a ground observer) of 15 degrees. This I did not check. If your 40 miles is supposed to represent horizon to horizon coverage, you may have slipped a digit (or perhaps I did). Actual line of sight to horizon is much greater, according to my calc. I derived the following rough formula for approximation of radius of coverage, based on Pythagoras: (forgive the formula format; I don't know how to make superscripts in this forum) x = sqrt(2Rh + hh) where x = radius of coverage (miles) R = earth's radius (miles) h = altitude of blimp (miles) sqrt = "square root" = multiplication symbol Using R=4,000 and h=13.26 yields x = 326 miles. Of course, this does not consider refraction of atmosphere, which would tend to increase the distance to horizon, nor does it consider height of the ground antenna. Also, I have no idea whether zero elevation angle for the line of sight allows practical communication. All of which is fascinating, but not particularly enlightening. Too many practical considerations (hills, buildings, atmospheric attenuation, link margins, etc.) for which we have little info. Still, I would think that some useful coverage in the 'SAC' and 'RAC' areas would be possible, perhaps with reduced data bandwidth. Reagan