whistlerbumps Posted November 9, 2018 Share Posted November 9, 2018 Surprised this wasn't already a topic.... SATS is a provider of satellite broadband and satellite services to Dish and other networks. Hughes broadband service is growing rapidly (EBITDA +25% y/y) as the company continues to increase subs and ARPU on its Jupiter 2 satellite as well as penetrate new countries. ESS business is declining but a cash cow (capex 29K vs. EBITDA of 72M in MRQ). Company also has upside optionality with its Dish Mexico stake (~$10 per share IMO) and European S Band spectrum (A little to more than the current share price for a WAG). Currently trading at less than tangible book value per share (~$38) with a good balance sheet and growing overall EBITDA. Seems mispriced to me. Anyone else have any thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted November 12, 2018 Author Share Posted November 12, 2018 SATS buyback on Friday... On November 8, 2018, EchoStar Corporation (“we” or “our”) announced that our Board of Directors had authorized a plan to repurchase up to $500.0 million of our Class A common stock $.001 par value per share through and including December 31, 2019, subject to market conditions and other factors. On November 9, 2018, we repurchased 848,863 shares of our Class A common stock through open market repurchases in accordance with such plan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterHK Posted November 12, 2018 Share Posted November 12, 2018 I've always found this business extraordinarily hard to understand at first glance, so I've stayed away, but it's always made me curious. Do you have any good primers on key drivers/what makes a good satellite company? Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted November 12, 2018 Author Share Posted November 12, 2018 Two real businesses here. Hughes which provides satellite-broadband and is the bulk of the value. You can get some more information on this business by researching their competitor Viasat. Hughes is by far the bulk of the business value here. The second business is the ESS business. While it has some other small businesses, the main business of ESS is leasing satellites to Dish. This business should be in slow decline with step-downs when Dish doesn't renew a lease (like Echo 7 which hurt Q3). That being said, its a cash cow and the decline should be very manageable and visible based on contract expiries. Hope that helps with the businesses. Best, TD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LowIQinvestor Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 whistlerbumps How do you arrive at the Dish Mexico value? Thanks for any insight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted December 10, 2018 Author Share Posted December 10, 2018 Very roughly... I'm not too worried about being precise to the $ here... More interested in knowing that it does have some relatively material value compared to SATS' current share price. That being said, here are a couple of back of the envelope methods..... Dish Mexico has >4mln subs. At $500 per sub that's $2bln or 980mln for the 49% shares which is ~$10 per share. Another back of the envelope. If we assume $25 per month in ARPU, that's 1.2bln of revenue so ~1x and you're also at ~$10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LowIQinvestor Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 Where did you get the sub figure for Dish Mexico? I found this from there most recent investor presentation: Approx. 2.5 to 2.75 million DTH subscribers as of September 30, 2018* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted December 10, 2018 Author Share Posted December 10, 2018 Interesting. Here's where I got it from. Grupo Televisa had 13.58 million accesses, 60.6% of the market, through pay-TV providers such as Sky and Cablemás. By the end of Q2 2017, Dish was the second largest operator with 4.04 million subs (18.1%), followed by Megacable (3.14 million, 14%) and Totalplay (470,000, 2.1%) https://www.rapidtvnews.com/2018011250427/televisa-still-dominates-mexican-pay-tv-market.html#axzz5ZJXCS4Dx At 2.5-2.75mln its ~$6-7 per share of SATS at $500 per sub. I will check in with IR to double check what I missed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted December 10, 2018 Author Share Posted December 10, 2018 Confirmed with Deepak that 2.5-2.75mln is best estimate. He noted that there are a lot of incorrect numbers on Dish Mexico out there, including on IFT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heth247 Posted January 27, 2019 Share Posted January 27, 2019 Just started to look at this company, it looks interesting. There have been multiple VIC write up on it too. whistlerbumps, do you have any idea what are the main reasons that its share price has been almost a straight decline since March 2018? Looks like its core business, the Hughes sat broadband, has very healthy growth ebitda, more than offsetting the decline in the ESS business. They backed off from an acquisition, which would have paid high valuation for Inmarsat, that looks positive to me. But why does market hate it so much and assign such a low multiple? Is market worrying about another attempt of acquisition? thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aqul Posted January 27, 2019 Share Posted January 27, 2019 SumZero's top picks for 2019 document included this as a long pitch. I believe that pitch mentioned that large HF and MF holders were dumping shares (believe the HF was shutting down). That combined with the recent correction should explain some of the price weakness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heth247 Posted January 28, 2019 Share Posted January 28, 2019 SumZero's top picks for 2019 document included this as a long pitch. I believe that pitch mentioned that large HF and MF holders were dumping shares (believe the HF was shutting down). That combined with the recent correction should explain some of the price weakness. Do you know which hedge fund? I would understand the decline at the end of 2018 due to the correction. But the decline started in March 2018. There must be some other reasons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aqul Posted January 28, 2019 Share Posted January 28, 2019 SumZero's top picks for 2019 document included this as a long pitch. I believe that pitch mentioned that large HF and MF holders were dumping shares (believe the HF was shutting down). That combined with the recent correction should explain some of the price weakness. Do you know which hedge fund? I would understand the decline at the end of 2018 due to the correction. But the decline started in March 2018. There must be some other reasons. The report said the HF was responsible for bringing it from high 50s to high 40s. They didn't seem to have a 13-G on the name, so I don't know which one it was. The MF appears to have been Putnam, which has been consistently selling in 2018. The SumZero report cites redemptions, which I need to verify. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aqul Posted January 28, 2019 Share Posted January 28, 2019 Just found out: Glenhill Advisors and Altalis Capital, both of whom shut down this year. They were mentioned in this SA article, which links their 13-Fs: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4221322-echostar-gift-market-gods You can find the names of the funds by copying the URL and deleting the part that begins with "xsl." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heth247 Posted January 28, 2019 Share Posted January 28, 2019 Just found out: Glenhill Advisors and Altalis Capital, both of whom shut down this year. They were mentioned in this SA article, which links their 13-Fs: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4221322-echostar-gift-market-gods You can find the names of the funds by copying the URL and deleting the part that begins with "xsl." Thanks, that helps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted January 30, 2019 Author Share Posted January 30, 2019 Just started to look at this company, it looks interesting. There have been multiple VIC write up on it too. whistlerbumps, do you have any idea what are the main reasons that its share price has been almost a straight decline since March 2018? Looks like its core business, the Hughes sat broadband, has very healthy growth ebitda, more than offsetting the decline in the ESS business. They backed off from an acquisition, which would have paid high valuation for Inmarsat, that looks positive to me. But why does market hate it so much and assign such a low multiple? Is market worrying about another attempt of acquisition? thanks. Sorry for the delayed response Heth, just saw this. I think the fund liquidations were a major factor in the stock declining which was then compounded by momentum and tax loss selling. Its also a bit of a HF hotel given the complexity and so it seemed to get tortured when HFs were hurting. Other factors that have hurt it is the debt raise for the failed acquisition which made the balance sheet inefficient and lead to concerns about management's capital allocation. People were also pissed that they weren't buying back stock but they finally did in Q4. Finally, there are some concerns about the future of the ESS business given Dish's subscriber shrink..... its probably a melting ice cube but I think it will throw off a lot of cash as it melts... hope that helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heth247 Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 Sorry for the delayed response Heth, just saw this. I think the fund liquidations were a major factor in the stock declining which was then compounded by momentum and tax loss selling. Its also a bit of a HF hotel given the complexity and so it seemed to get tortured when HFs were hurting. Other factors that have hurt it is the debt raise for the failed acquisition which made the balance sheet inefficient and lead to concerns about management's capital allocation. People were also pissed that they weren't buying back stock but they finally did in Q4. Finally, there are some concerns about the future of the ESS business given Dish's subscriber shrink..... its probably a melting ice cube but I think it will throw off a lot of cash as it melts... hope that helps Thanks for the reply, whistlerbumps. I see they are sitting on $3B cash while paying ~$200M net interest expense (if you deduct the interest income), that alone is $2/share. So if they simply pay off their debt with cash, wouldn't that be a immediate boost of $2/share to the bottom line? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted January 31, 2019 Author Share Posted January 31, 2019 They won't repay all of it but they have 990mln maturing in 2019 that they expect to repay with cash on hand which will help with interest expense. That being said, they are always on the lookout for acquisitions etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heth247 Posted February 22, 2019 Share Posted February 22, 2019 What do you guys think of the earnings? Rev flat Q-to-Q, margin pressure in the short term, no clear guidance on the S-band side or acquisition. Seems no near term catalyst for the stock price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sombunall Posted February 22, 2019 Share Posted February 22, 2019 They're going to pay off $919m in debt when it comes due in June, out of cash. This debt bears interest at 6.9%. That's $60m+ in interest expense. Pretty significant on 95 million shares. There is also a significant buyback in place, though they only bought 953,000 shares so far. Subscriber growth y-o-y was pretty good, ~13%. Maybe no other visible catalysts, but I don't know of another stock that has so many free "options." Too cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted February 22, 2019 Author Share Posted February 22, 2019 Agree that there's no catalyst but still seems cheap.. and agree that debt paydown is very accretive to FCF Hughes got hit by a few 1x factors... bad debt and lower revs from equipment purchasers and start up costs in S. America.... Still a unique and growing asset... For some reason the market will still pay 12x+ 2020 VSAT EBITDA but only 5x 2019 SATS EBITDA even though SATS EBITDA is mostly Hughes which is very similar to VSAT... Combine that with S-Band which starts to become more visible in 2020 and Dish Mexico and I think there are a lot of ways to generate upside... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heth247 Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 Agree that there's no catalyst but still seems cheap.. and agree that debt paydown is very accretive to FCF Hughes got hit by a few 1x factors... bad debt and lower revs from equipment purchasers and start up costs in S. America.... Still a unique and growing asset... For some reason the market will still pay 12x+ 2020 VSAT EBITDA but only 5x 2019 SATS EBITDA even though SATS EBITDA is mostly Hughes which is very similar to VSAT... Combine that with S-Band which starts to become more visible in 2020 and Dish Mexico and I think there are a lot of ways to generate upside... I just started to look at this one in more details... Although it is cheap on a EV/EBITDA basis, it seems that there is no free cash flow. They spent about $550M~700M every year for the past three years on new sats. Will this kind of CAPEX stop at some point? What would be the normalized CAPEX? Or, is the lack of FCF due to the fact that they are unleveled, and the fact that 3B cash sits on the BS doing nothing? Just trying to understand what is the game plan... thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogermunibond Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 SATS, VSAT and Inmarsat are all building out Ka-band systems. VSAT probably has the lowest cost per Gb bandwidth, then SATS which cribbed VSAT designs and paid for it in a judgement, then Inmarsat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heth247 Posted May 9, 2019 Share Posted May 9, 2019 Thoughts on the 1Q earning? I am disappointed that they are buying back debt (likely not much discount) instead of stocks. What is wrong with their capital allocation strategy? Or, they just don't see the stock as under valued? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whistlerbumps Posted May 9, 2019 Author Share Posted May 9, 2019 I thought Q1 was good.. Hughes EBITDA up 18% y/y and some good strategic partnerships announced. Re capital allocation, I agree with you about the share buyback. Its been a constant frustration of SATS shareholders that they are not willing to more aggressively buyback stock. It has been noted that Charlie is storing dry powder for upcoming opportunities that he thinks will be very compelling but that argument gets worse with the lower share price increasing the ROIC on repurchases. I don't mind the debt repurchase as the they are repaying the 2019s this summer. If they can buy those now at a small discount, I am fine with that. Repaying the 19s should be positive as it will make the balance sheet less inefficient (currently >3bln of both debt and cash but that will decrease by 900mln post repayment). This balance sheet inefficiency was a result of the company raising debt in advance of an acquisition that didn't pan out. The repayment will be very accretive to FCF due to having ~64mln lower interest expense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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