EchoStar Corporation (SATS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, to EchoStar Corporation's 2021 Virtual Shareholder Meeting. I am Dean Manson, the Secretary for EchoStar Corporation. It is now 11:30 a.m. Mountain time, so let's get started. I'll turn the call over to Charlie Ergen, our Chairman.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our virtual meeting of shareholders. I'm Charlie Ergen, the Chairman of EchoStar Corporation, and I'll be serving as the Chairman for today's meeting. The polls are open for voting. If you have a question, you may submit it via the meeting portal. All of our current members of the Board are in attendance, in person or virtually today's meeting. Also present is Chris McCurdy, a representative of KPMG, our independent registered public accounting firm. I'll now ask Mr. Manson, as Secretary for the meeting, to present proof that the notice of meeting has been properly given.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to confirm that notice of this meeting has been due and that a proxy statement was duly sent to all of the company's shareholders of record as of March 3, 2021, and additional proxy materials were filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Michael D. has been appointed as the inspection of elections for this meeting. The inspector has filed his oath of office with the company, along with his certificate stating that the holders of a quorum of voting securities of the company are present virtually or represented by a proxy at this meeting. The proposals to be voted on were set forth in our proxy statement. There are 3 of them: the election of 8 directors; the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the independent registered public accounting firm for the company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021; and the approval of an amendment to the EchoStar Corporation 2017 nonemployee Director Stock Incentive Plan as represented in the proxy statement. We'll now pause for a few seconds before the closing of the polls to allow any final votes to go through our electronic portal. [Voting] The polls are now closed, and the Inspector of Elections has completed his preliminary tabulation. Mr. Secretary, may I have your report.

Mr. Chairman, the preliminary tabulation of the inspector is as follows: Based on the votes cast in person and by proxy, all 3 proposals have received more than 95% of the total required vote and are therefore passed.

There being no further business, the formal portion of the meeting is hereby adjourned. We will now entertain questions from shareholders about the items voted upon by the shareholders of this meeting or anything else for that matter. As usual, updates regarding EchoStar's business and financial performance will be addressed on our earnings call, which is tentatively scheduled for May 6, and will be formally announced soon.And I think we have 1 question. I see -- basically, comes in and says your stock price has trended down for a year. What actions are you planning to planning to reverse this trend and in what timeframe? And I'll try to take that and maybe, Mike, you want to -- you have something you want to add. Obviously, we're disappointed in the stock price. And we've been in a situation where we've continued our core business, and we've done a few things that are obviously longer term, which take time for sometimes the market to react to. But obviously, we continue to grow our existing business. We have a lot of things that we're doing within other frequencies that we think have long-term connectivity. We know a lot about where the terrestrial 5G world was going, and think it sound like it's going to play a big role there. But we also have to be cognizant of what is happening around us. So we look at a lot of things happened in the LEO business, which are -- which we have a lot of experience now with one way with a small investment. But also on a technical point of view, where we've done a lot of the ground network infrastructure for them. And we're a little bit more cautious maybe than other people, and we think that -- but we see lots of opportunity. We think that there's in the satellite space. And sometimes patience is rewarded, and we think that at this point in time, given where a lot of valuations and a lot of technical projects that we think are going to be challenged. This is a good time to continue to monitor those things and -- but focus on our day-to-day business with the biggest thing being the successful completion of Jupiter 3 and the launch of Jupiter 3, which adds a lot of capacity and potential revenue for us. Mike, you might want to add a little more?

Yes, I got it. I'm probably as disappointed as anybody because we continue to hit all the numbers. We continue to deliver good quarters. We have expanded our international business significantly outside the U.S. Our team did a great job through the pandemic. And I think we have a lot of value that's just unrecognized right now. And I'm really looking forward to prove all the naysayers wrong as we continue through this year and get -- as Charlie said, Jupiter 3 is a big deal. But we also have an awful lot of expanded contracts for the Jupiter 3 architecture that have nothing to do with the Jupiter 3 satellite, but in fact, are servicing a lot of our key customers. So I guess that's my comment.

I mean I think the key is that we try to build value every day, even if it's not kind of seeing all at once and sometimes it takes a bit of time. But there is plenty of opportunity out there, and we are -- have a strong balance sheet. So we do think that not only our core business growing it, but we do think there's opportunity to ease our balance sheet.

Great. Thanks, Charlie and Mike. Mr. Chairman, there are no further questions.

With that, thanks, everybody, for joining us today. Sorry, it's so short. And sorry that we can't do it in person, but I look forward to next year when we can do that.