Iridium Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:IRDM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ric Prentiss: Okay. Thanks, everyone. Stay well.

Matthew Desch: Thank you.

Operator: And our next question comes from Hamed Khorsand from BWS. Please go ahead with your question.

Hamed Khorsand: Hey, good morning. Could you just talk about the IoT customer composition? Did that change in Q3? Are you expecting that to change anytime soon?

Matthew Desch: Given our extensive history in IoT over a long period of time and the literally hundreds of partners and I mean, could be thousands of solutions there, it doesn’t change that much quarter over quarter. There might be some partners have contracts perhaps in specific industries or something that are doing slightly better in one quarter over another, but it really doesn’t manifest itself into a single quarter driver to anything we do. I’ve talked in the past about some potential new growth vectors with things like autonomous systems and drones and that sort of thing, and we’ve certainly seen lots of experimentation in that area. But really, on the whole, it’s a very broad-based base from energy to transportation to oil and gas to heavy equipment and beyond.

And it’s really — it’s very consistent kind of quarter to quarter. There’s just a little stronger summer activity perhaps while in the northern hemisphere it’s a little more outdoor, particularly in the consumer segment to that space. But otherwise, it’s pretty consistent.

Hamed Khorsand: Okay. And then on the equipment revenue side, obviously it shrank this quarter. Is this, your expectation that there’s enough supply out there or is this shrinkage just because demand isn’t as strong as your resellers thought it would be?

Matthew Desch: The latter. Yes, it’s — I think Tom provided a lot of detail there. This is going to be our second highest year ever, and while it’s slightly lower than last year — I mean, it’s going to be lower than last year, our long-term — a lot of that reason was because of both the stock out of handsets and also just our partners really needing equipment as they were struggling in their own supply chains and saw that we were not able to deliver them on time. So I think you’re going to see more of a normalized demand over time, and that is as we talked in the investor day a couple weeks ago, that’s what we were assuming was more of a normalized equipment demand rate as we gave you our forecast out through 2030.

Hamed Khorsand: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: And our next question comes from Caleb Henry from Quality Space. Please go ahead with your question.

Caleb Henry: Hi, guys. Just one question because I think most of mine have been answered already. Just on the Qualcomm rollout, you mentioned that it was going a little bit slower than they had anticipated. I’m wondering if they gave you any clarity as to why it was moving a little bit slower and if you have kind of an updated timeline for adoption.

Matthew Desch: No. I mean, not really. I mean, we don’t have the visibility into the discussions with the handset suppliers and their specific timelines and what their expectations are. So not a lot of information. And as we’ve said pretty consistently over time, the information will come out when phone manufacturers decide to deploy it and when that plans to be.

Caleb Henry: All right. Thanks. That’s all for me.

Operator: And our next question comes from Edison Yu from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead with your question.

Edison Yu: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. First, it seems the IoT ARPU has been on the uptick the last couple quarters. I know it’s certainly lumpy, but do you think that’s something that can continue or is this kind of flattish going forward or any thoughts there?