comsys 14th edition Hughes Market Summary & Company Profile R Connect to the future.TM The VSAT Report 14th edition Version 1.0 Market Summary & Company Profile This report has been prepared subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the prior written consent of COMSYS LLP. No part of this report may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of COMSYS LLP. Permission is granted to utilise the information in this report for the purposes of analyst research reports on Hughes Network Systems and the VSAT Industry with the express permission of Hughes Network Systems. This copy is only intended to be used by the company specified by Hughes Network Systems. COMSYS LLP PO Box 65749, London, N13 9BW, England Telephone: +44-1727-832288 Web: www.comsys.co.uk © COMSYS LLP, 2017 “VSAT is Hughes and, in many “Market dominance of this magnitude ways, Hughes is VSAT” does not come from doing things wrong” “Hughes' presence casts a shadow over almost every player in the market. Its dominance of the enterprise VSAT industry is remarkable...” “Hughes has stayed with the “The company lives and breathes the pace, generally making the technology at all levels from chipsets to right judgements and reading installation, not least because it lays claim the market’s demand better to have started the industry with its work than its competitors” in the early to late 1980s” “Hughes’ achievement really has been “For the potential purchaser, monumental both on its own account and the fact that buying Hughes is on behalf of the industry” rarely a mistake counts for a great deal.” “Hughes has managed to achieve the virtually impossible” “Hughes has managed to walk “Hughes is the only company to have the tightrope between developed a platform that competes and innovation and proven reliability wins at the highest and most specialised which service providers in the levels of the market as well as in the mass enterprise business require to consumer business – this is achieved on a the exclusion of almost anything single, unbelievably flexible operating else” platform” “Wal-Mart’s adoption of a VSAT system from Hughes in 1983 was described by Fortune Magazine in June 2005 as one of the 20 “epic decisions [which] were breathtakingly smart” and made history” “the first lesson for all other VSAT system vendors: never take your eye off Hughes.” 1. Hughes – The Company 1.1. Company Performance Hughes is the 800 pound gorilla of the VSAT market and even the largest of the company’s competitors generally try and work around it rather than go head-to-head. Those companies that let their attention wander or make the mistake that theirs is a segment Hughes has no interest in, get a rude awakening. The fact of the matter is that VSAT is Hughes and, in many ways, Hughes is VSAT. The company lives and breathes the technology at all levels from chipsets to installation not least because it lays claim to have started the industry with its early work in the early to late 1980s. As its positive financial results demonstrated every quarter since it 55.40% went public in 2007 and until it was swallowed by EchoStar, what sets the company apart today and Shipped Enterprise Market Share, drives its growth is the service business. Beyond Historical technology and product innovation, over the past several years Hughes has successfully morphed into being the leading broadband satellite service provider in North America, Europe, India and Brazil as well as supplying a growing list of operators and service provider customers in the rest of the world with its broadband technologies and products. Hughes’ presence casts a shadow over almost every player in the market. Its dominance of the enterprise VSAT industry is remarkable in the fact that the company has been able to sustain its lead 53.19% for over twenty years and that it has rolled with the punches and constantly responded with new Shipped Consumer & Enterprise developments which has kept it at the forefront of Market Share, Historical an intensely competitive market. Customers purchase HNS VSAT systems because it is the market leader, understands competitive pricing and has cutting edge products, but also because there is a confidence that the company will always overcome any problems and the system will work reliably. Furthermore, being a leading service provider that uses its own products adds immeasurably to Hughes’ advantage when operators are deciding on Hughes technology versus the competition. HNS has managed to walk the tightrope between innovation and proven reliability which service providers in the enterprise business require to the exclusion of almost anything else. The company has consistently beaten its competitors to the punch in terms of the delivery of new breakthroughs in technology – in mid-2016 it released the first DVB-S2X VSAT platform at least six months ahead of every other competitor. A few years ago its customers enjoyed a real head-start in efficiency when the company hit the streets with the first DVB-S2 ACM platform, more than a year ahead of anyone else and there are examples of operators who gained a critical advantage in the market as a result. Hughes is traditionally a very conservative company giving the impression that it simply plods along, but to believe this would be a mistake. It is finely in tune with the market and misses little. Looking back, its product releases either catch the wave or begin it in the first place and the engineering machine which lies at the core of the company is continually advancing 36.06% the platform and introducing new features. Hughes Shipped Enterprise Market Share, is the only company which has been able to 2015 demonstrate sustained leadership in technology, market share and financial results in the VSAT business. Whereas GE, NEC, AT&T, GTE, Contel, Qualcomm and Scientific-Atlanta have all fallen by the wayside, HNS has powered on through both their successors as well as newcomers. This undoubtedly gives its customers a confidence which cannot be matched by others. The challenge never abates, competition grows and the industry is of a size to allow innovation to have a substantial impact. This has always been good for 53.61% Hughes and has led it to strive to develop both new technology and service-related features, reduce cost Shipped Consumer Market Share, and move its products on. As a case in point this 2015 report covers more than 300 operators around the world and a significant proportion of them still employ one or more Hughes PES systems they acquired a dozen years or more ago. During the research for our last report we interviewed an operator that finally switched its PES platform off after over 20 years of service and, for the past ten years the hub had run flawlessly without even a re- boot. It would be all too easy to rely on this kind of longevity, but the success of the HughesNet service business has fuelled the high volume manufacturing and quick succession of new generations up to the 48.87% current Jupiter System, thereby maintaining the company’s 50 per cent historical market share during Shipped Consumer & Enterprise a time that the market has grown by a factor of four. Market Share, 2015 Hughes has consolidated its early lead in the satellite broadband Internet access market through its HughesNet service business with over a million consumer subscribers in North America by the end of 2016. Together with its enterprise business the company has now manufactured and shipped over five million Hughes broadband terminals and, combined with the PES system, over 5.6 million units have been produced. This market is one which feeds on volume and, once again, Hughes stands head and shoulders above its rivals. It alone has highly successful service businesses across four continents that fuel its manufacturing arm and challenges its engineers to improve product performance and quality while driving down cost. The threat from the standards- based DVB-RCS system vendors has evaporated, but iDirect continues to be strong in the small network segment, Gilat remains extremely aggressive in the enterprise market and ViaSat is a focused and a very worthwhile competitor in the consumer market. All are credible competitors and, we would argue, essential to keeping Hughes on its toes, but it is interesting to note that in each different segment of the market, all these companies have the same thing in common – their biggest competitor is Hughes. HNS has stayed with the pace, generally making the right judgements and reading the market’s demands better than its competitors. The past two years have seen Hughes retain its position once more as the leader of the industry in terms of both shipments and orders. It recorded over a third of all enterprise VSAT shipments in 2015 and over half in 2014. Major sales included technology refresh deals, extensions and new networks with GTECH and the Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition in the US, MinTIC in Colombia, Bank of Baroda and the State Bank of India, Primacom in Indonesia, Vodacom in the DRC, Yahsat for AY3 over Africa, KB Iskra in Russia, Dexar in Turkey and many others. 2016 has also seen the company achieve a high degree of success with its latest Jupiter platform selling to the likes of KBZ Gateway and SeaNet in Myanmar, DirecTV and ARSAT in Argentina and PSN in Indonesia. Alongside all these deals, Hughes retains a very strong presence in the growing Ka-band market with the likes of Yahsat, Avanti, MNLA, Xplornet and RSCC.