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

To: Rocket Scientist who wrote (4307)	8/21/1998 12:12:00 AM
From: Valueman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

I have fretted over these numbers myself. Readware's estimate was based on timely launches, which obviously is not the case now--so those numbers have to be changed. I don't know that you can extrapolate the performance of Skynet presently out to all the future sats. Loral would say no to that. The booking of $192 million in business in this last quarter, along with the info that backlog rose to $548 million from $224 million in the year-earlier quarter would seem to indicate an acceleration in business. Typically, you book the sat before launch with the lower margin business so you can get a good jump out of the gate. The book of business should improve over time. So, for 99, we have 152 transponders for the whole year. We should have 48 more for at least 6 months. In essence, we have a total of 176 transponders for the equivalent of a year. At a low ball average transponder revenue of $1.4 million per year, that gives $246 million, with a low ball 80% margin gets you $197 million. Any higher revenue average is gravy. The key will be whether revenue per transponder rises over present levels. As more sats go up, EBITDA margins will also improve dramatically. We know that 4&5 are now fully booked. We will see if they produce the revenue that they should in the Q3.