Telesat Corporation (NASDAQ:TSAT) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call August 14, 2024 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

James Ratcliffe - Vice President, Investor Relations
Dan Goldberg - Chief Executive Officer & President
Andrew Browne - Chief Financial Officer
Dave Wendling - Chief Technical Officer
John Flaherty - Vice President, Business Planning & Marketing

Conference Call Participants

Edison Yu - Deutsche Bank
David McFadden - Cormark Securities
Chris Quilty - Quilty Space
Walter Piecyk - Lightshed
Sean Mahoney - Bank of America

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the conference call to report the second quarter 2024 financial results for Telesat. Our speakers today will be Daniel 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. James Ratcliffe, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Ratcliffe.

James Ratcliffe

Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone. This morning, we filed our quarterly report for the period ending June 30, 2024, 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, please see Telesat's annual report and update 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.

Dan Goldberg

Hey, thanks, James, and good morning, everyone. Q2 in the first six months of this year have unfolded consistent with our expectations. As a result, we're reaffirming all of our guidance for the year and keeping focused to make sure we meet those objectives. When we hosted our first quarter call in early May, we indicated we were seeking to conclude our Lightspeed funding agreements with the governments of Canada and Quebec by the end of this summer. This is obviously a key priority for us.

I'm happy to say that, we've had good and sustained engagement with government representatives, and we are optimistic that we remain on track to achieve this timing. We'll make a separate announcement once the definitive funding agreements are concluded.

Beyond that, we're making strong progress executing on the Lightspeed program as MDA, our Prime Satellite contractor, noted on its earnings call last week, they've now selected and onboarded 90% of the suppliers for the Lightspeed program, and they remain on track for their full year ramp-up plan. We've increased our own head count since the start of the year by nearly 20% as we stop up to execute on Lightspeed, and the team is making excellent progress on the program.