Viasat has released its First Quarter Fiscal Year 2020 results.

According to CEO Mark Dankberg, “IFC revenue declined precipitously YoY with about 45% of our installed 1,390 aircraft base inactive at quarter end. Overall passenger activity declined even further. While aircraft in service and passenger counts improved towards the end of the quarter, the outlook remains uncertain. We believe aircraft retirements with our IFC service have been disproportionately low because we are on relatively newer aircraft, and we expect this will lead to market share gains. We still anticipate about 750 additional aircraft to activate IFC services under our existing customer agreements – as well as seeing more of the existing installed fleet being re-activated. New order negotiations are very robust, driven by our reputation for service quality, our new satellites under construction and a stressful environment for our competitors.”

According to Dankberg, the company’s IFC business was “probably a little worse than what we had expected in that first quarter,” however new contract awards are giving the company confidence for the rest of the year.

Speaking to analysts, Dankberg said that airlines were paying significant attention to IFC as being connected while flying has become even more important to passengers.

He also stated his belief that Viasat has been more immune to the effects of aircraft retirements than other IFC providers, as its systems fly on newer planes. The majority of the contracts it had pre-pandemic are still intact, he said adding “we still expect to deploy them once the market picks up again.”

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