Telesat Corporation (NASDAQ:TSAT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 6, 2023 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Michael Bolitho - Director of Treasury and Risk Management

Daniel Goldberg - President and Chief Executive Officer

Andrew Browne - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Walter Piecyk - LightShed Partners

Caleb Henry - Quilty Space

Arun Seshadri - BNP Paribas

Brandon Karsch - Kennedy Lewis

Matt Lapides - Abry Partners

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the conference call to report the Third Quarter 2023 Financial Results for Telesat. Our speakers today will be Dan Goldberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Telesat; and Andrew Browne, Chief Financial Officer of Telesat.

I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Michael Bolitho, Director of Treasury and Risk Management. Please go ahead, Sir.

Michael Bolitho

Thank you, and good morning. This morning, we filed our quarterly report on Form 6-K with the SEC and on SEDAR. Our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements. There are risks that Telesat's actual results may differ materially from the results contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of known and unknown risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of known risks, see Telesat's annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Telesat assumes no responsibility to update or revise these forward-looking statements.

I will now turn the call over to Dan Goldberg, Telesat's President and Chief Executive Officer.

Daniel Goldberg

Okay. Thank you, Michael. This morning, I will share some thoughts on our financial results and give an update on the business. I'll then hand over to Andrew, who will speak to the numbers in detail, and then we will open the call up for questions. We have been executing well so far this year, are on-track with the key financial, strategic, and operational objectives we have been focused on. We are tracking our guidance, received the final roughly $260 million of U.S. C-band clearing proceeds, and completed some meaningful additional debt repurchased in the quarter that we think will strengthen our financial position and create value for shareholders. Obviously, a huge focus for us is executing on Telesat Lightspeed our advanced broadband LEO network, and I will give some updates on that.

Since sharing on our Q2 call that we selected MDA as our prime contractor, and are fully-funded for the program, we have done a significant amount of work with MDA to advance the program, including further engagement with the supply chain. Both Telesat and MDA are ramping-up their teams to execute Lightspeed. And I have been really pleased, but not surprised, by the extraordinarily capable people we are bringing on board and the really strong interest we are seeing from professionals throughout the industry, to join us to work on this flagship program.