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ViaSat (VSAT 4.44%)
Q4 2021 Earnings Call
May 25, 2021, 2:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

  • Prepared Remarks
  • Questions and Answers
  • Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:


Operator

Welcome to Viasat's FY '21 fourth-quarter earnings conference call. Your host for today's call is Rick Baldridge, president and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Baldridge.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

OK. Thanks for joining us today. We released our shareholder letter earlier today before the market opened and hope you have all had a little time to review that. On today's call, we'll do a little bit of just brief opening remarks and spend the rest of the time on Q&A.

But first, let's have Robert to provide our safe harbor disclosure.

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Robert Blair -- Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary

Thanks, Rick. As you know, this discussion will contain forward-looking statements. This is a reminder that factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Additional information concerning these factors is contained in our SEC filings, including our most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.

Copies are available from the SEC or from our website. With that said, back to you, Rick.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

OK. Thanks, Robert. And hello, everybody, and welcome to our fourth-quarter and year-end call. In addition to Robert joining us on the call today is Mark Dankberg, our executive chairman; our CFO, Shawn Duffy; Paul Froelich, from corporate development and investor relations team; and had a new addition here, Peter Lopez, that's joined us that's focusing on IR, investor relations right now.

So before getting to Q&A, we'll just cover a few highlights. First thing to note is we're really, really proud of what we achieved in our fiscal year '21 performance, especially in the light of all the challenges that I'm sure a lot of companies had but associated with COVID-19 that obviously hit us right from the beginning. A combination of our diversified business mix and early and very decisive cost actions and then prioritization along the year, alongside the really hard work and adaptability, flexibility of our employees, allowed us to achieve really stellar financial results for the year, including records for adjusted EBITDA, operating cash flow of over $700 million and record awards. We finished the year on a strong note with fourth quarter that is stronger than normal, 23% year-over-year growth in Q4 adjusted EBITDA.

Our business segments are performing well with really strong momentum going into 2022. In satellite services, we saw strong demand with stable churn and record ARPU for our fixed consumer services. Our IFC business was severely impacted by COVID the whole year. We've seen some steady improvement each quarter since the beginning, but we're still well below the level of pre-pandemic business.

The trend continues toward normal travel patterns, but with the consumers' leading business travelers in that area. Government systems had good revenue and EBITDA performance especially in light of procurement challenges created by the pandemic. And we had another year of over $1 billion in awards, making the -- marking the third year in a row for that milestone in our government business and added to our backlog. Commercial networks had a strong performance here with -- in our antenna systems business specifically, partially offsetting the COVID-related impact in IFC mobile terminal shipments.

But beyond the numbers, we achieved other really, really important execution milestones and wins that are worth noting. One is -- the first one is completing the payload integration of the first of the three ViaSat-3 payloads, the one that's going to go over the Americas at our Tempe, Arizona facility. We're currently preparing the first payload for shipment to Boeing, which is imminent. Our target launch date of early calendar 2022 remains on track.

We added Delta Airlines as a new very important customer in our IFC business, now with over 530 aircraft under contract, if you saw the press release we sent out today that added another 230 aircraft that -- what we already had. We commenced installations in another new customer, KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines. And we kept our eye on long-term strategies and opportunity sets with the acquisition of RigNet and the other half of our European joint venture. We closed them actually on the same day.

These achievements reflect our continued focus on execution ahead of the ViaSat-3 as we grow our global footprint and expand into new geographies and new vertical markets. It also support our long-term financial targets. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, we believe we've kept ViaSat on track to double revenue and more than double EBITDA by FY '25. We're still targeting turning free cash flow positive two to three quarters after the launch of our second ViaSat-3 satellite.

So with that, let's go ahead and jump into the first questions. Operator?

Questions & Answers:


Operator

Thank you, sir. [Operator instructions] Our first question is from Ric Prentiss with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Hi, good morning, good afternoon, everyone.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

A couple of questions. The first question, I just want to talk on the schedule. You mentioned the ViaSat-3 over the Americas on track for calendar year '22 early launch. Any issues with COVID-19 supply chains, construction stuff? And can you lay out kind of the thoughts then on when the 3B over EMEA and 3C over APAC are on track for launching and in-service?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I mean, I can't predict that there won't be any other COVID impacts. I mean that's – you know, it definitely hit us pretty hard this last year on that payload. But generally speaking, you know, we're pretty well coordinated. The supply chain, most of everything is there for that first one.

You know, Boeing, look, those guys speak for themselves, but we've got a lot of confidence. They understand the schedule, the bus, you know, is ready. So we don't expect anything, you know, but anything can happen. The second payload, as we've said before, is about six months behind the first one.

The only thing that's happened here is the third payload right now, which used to be a year behind the second one, is more like in the six- to nine-month range behind the second one. It's moved up. So that's the current schedule.

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Great. And how long to rise them into orbit? How long should we think about in-service versus launch dates?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I don't think we've officially announced our launch providers for each one of them, and it varies by launch provider. So we'll give you a better idea as we get a little bit closer to the launch in terms of -- because each one has a different orbit raising profile. The test after we get on orbit is probably about the same. And that's probably a little longer for the first one than it is for the second and third one.

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Makes sense. Obviously, a big year for government, $1 billion in awards. When you think about those awards and the bidding, how many of those contracts are you guys going in on like a solo bid? How many are you joint bidding with someone else? And who are your bigger partners or your competitors as you think about those awards that you keep putting up on the board?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, in most cases, we're the prime. So we do partner with other people. Obviously, we had, you know, a partnership on an Australian bid with Northrop. We, you know, -- so we'll partner where it makes sense.

We've done -- we do work with Harris on our MIDS product. They're, in that case, a supplier to us. We provide components to them too and others. So -- but most of our awards, we're prime and a lot of them are competitive.

So we're competing against other big primes, as well as others. So obviously, the MIDS thing is we compete with BAE and we compete with that joint venture of Data Link Solutions between BAE and the old Rockwell. So that's competitive on, you know, every cycle. Small tactical terminal, we don't -- we're not really competing.

We're competing in any case with potentially an alternative solution or an alternative way to do it. But, you know, we're the only ones with that product. So -- we've done the nondevelopment item, we invested our own money and developed that. So we're -- and it really was competitive with the old -- a piece of the old JTRS, the airborne, maritime and fixed terminal that didn't make it through the JTRS profile.

That's really what where that terminal competes. And we don't -- nobody else has a handheld Link 16 product like ours, the BATS-D. So in a lot of these cases, it's the sole-source product that's out there and we're the prime contractor. We might go into F-16 or F-18, so we're not the ultimate source that they're procuring this from us.

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Makes sense. And last one for me. Rick, you called out the acquisitions that you made in April 30, I think it was, the RigNet and the European JV. How should we think about what that means as far as additive revenue and added EBITDA once you fold it into your systems now that you've had them for going on just about a month now?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Shawn?

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes. Hey, Rick, I can jump in on that. I probably think of them combined top-line maybe next year contributing another $230 million or so. And on the EBITDA line, maybe about $40 million.

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

OK. And that's for like 11 months in.

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

Around that, yes.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

The other thing to think about is this year, there are synergies in each one of these transactions, but there's also implementation costs of -- and the integration cost of getting them in. And they're kind of, the way we were looking at it, pretty much offsetting each other in its first fiscal year.

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Right, right. And are they going to go into Sat Services? Or is there some mix between the different segments that you guys report?

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

The majority of it is going to go into Sat Services. There's a bit on the product side from RigNet that will go over into Commercial. You could think of it as less than -- or around the 10% to 15% of that number.

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Perfect. Thanks. Appreciate you guys. I'll say, well.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Ric.

Operator

Our next question is from Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Simon Flannery -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Great. Thank you so much. In the shareholder letter, you talked about a significant growth opportunity in recurring service revenues as the ViaSat Constellation 3 and Constellation enters service. Could you give us a little bit more color about where you -- what your visibility is on that opportunity? So in terms of sales conversations or traffic going to be moving across, but how do we think about that ramp in recurring service revenue as the three satellites come on? And how much of that is sort of in backlog or pretty firmly circled at this point?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So Simon, you know, we're not -- unlike a lot of the fixed-satellite service guys that sell their bandwidth out and give contracts before they launch, we -- I think you know, we don't do that mostly. I mean it's not that we don't do some of that. We've done that, for instance, with XCI in Canada was an example previously, and Telesat before we've done some of that stuff with. But I mean Telesat but -- other operators, but, you know, this comes from getting consumer subscribers and getting small business subscribers and aero -- winning in-flight connectivity and platform markets in that space, ground vehicles, maritime, signing up those subscribers as we go.

We, in most cases, are direct. As -- when we get outside of the U.S., there will be areas where we make some wholesale deals, and there might be areas where we sell some capacity. But there's -- these satellites are -- they were built to what we see as a demand in the marketplace. So it really starts with a market area where we see demand and where we think we can increase the market share by bringing something that's quite a bit better than this one that's been there before.

So it's not like, you know -- I'm not going to mention the other operators, but they may presell two-thirds of their satellite before they ever launched. That's not what we do.

Simon Flannery -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Yes. So -- 

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

On the other hand, the other thing to note is we do have over 2,500 of that site that we have -- government track. So a lot of those are fairly predictable. That's what we're looking to do is to capture a source of revenue that are typical in that helps us forecast, but our growth will be --

Simon Flannery -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Yes, that makes sense. And I guess part of it, you know, you do have a backlog of IFC and you added to that today with Delta. What sort of timeline do you think you will see those planes coming online?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think, so what -- we deliver about a little over 400 of those aircraft over the next 12 months.

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, something like that, of the Delta aircraft.

Simon Flannery -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

OK. And then the balance of the year after?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah.

Simon Flannery -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Great. And perhaps any color on -- we heard, you know, many of our companies talking about things got a lot better in March and then continue to improve. And we see the latest TSA data. So is it fair to say that activity in IFC is continuing to accelerate through the current quarter from the levels of Q1?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. I kind of identified that in my opening remarks. They're definitely -- we're seeing, you know, month-to-month increase in the number of aircraft. They're actually in service and the number of passengers that are flying.

But most of it is in consumer. We -- they're not -- they're seeing a very slow return business travelers right now.

Simon Flannery -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Great. Are you seeing more evidence that consumers are starting to have higher take rates or use more bandwidth than maybe in the past?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

We're seeing similar take rates than what we have seen just if you think of a percentage of passengers. Remember that business people travel for leisure also. So it's just because they're not traveling for business doesn't mean they're not doing business while they're traveling. 

Simon Flannery -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Yes. OK. Great. Many thanks.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

OK.

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Phil Cusick with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Phil Cusick -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Hey, guys, thanks. With the payload of the first ViaSat-3 shipping soon and the next two getting toward completion, remind us how we should think about capex in the next year?

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, sure. I can take that one. So a couple of things. One is to remember that this year, I would say we had a little bit of our capital shift to right, just trying to purposely map that up against the schedule.

So I think that's one thing to keep in mind. And then we're in that last year before launch. So the capital in '22, I would think of it as a quarterly rate of around $300 million. That is going to start to tee up on the back half.

That's probably a good range.

Phil Cusick -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

OK, OK. And then second, if you could talk about the sales headwinds you've seen in the government and defense business over the last year. And are those easing that we can start seeing that business really take off?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

No, they were -- most of them were related to -- I mean, like simple physical things, people couldn't get access to some of the networks that they needed to utilize to review and issue contracts or to accept contracts or those types of things. And, you know, given what's happened and given that the CDC has now come out and a lot of people have been vaccinated, and now they're saying that if you have been fully vaccinated and to have the adequate time that you don't have those precautions. So we would expect that things are returning to normal over the next few months and certainly the remainder of the year. We're seeing -- we still see quite a lot of awards.

Obviously, we got over $1 billion. But it was more difficult than in previous periods for sure.

Phil Cusick -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Right. That's just logistics of signing contracts and going there? I know it's been a big headwind, but it seems like not quite normal yet but getting toward normal in the next few months?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think that's a good characterization.

Phil Cusick -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

And is there a real backlog of things that need to be signed and are sort of ready to go that we'd see picking up, whether it's this quarter or next quarter? Or is that going to be more gradual?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

You know, the government awards are always pretty lumpy. I would expect that's going to continue. So, you know, if you look at this year, we have really good front-end orders in that area because just there were some contract timing, those things were ready to go. And so I think we'll see it continue to be lumpy.

Phil Cusick -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

OK. And then last one, there was a headline recently that you may consider splitting the business or selling the business. Pretty clearly, you aren't getting the multiple for the defense business in the market that you deserve. Can you help us think about anything you can do on how that makes sense or what the synergies are of having the government and civilian businesses under a single roof? Thank you.

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

Sure, yeah. We see there's significant synergies in having both the government and commercial in multiple different form factors. One is the government is, you know, a complicated user of these types of broadband services because they will have concentrated demand in certain areas that will move around. And look, you have to think of it is as -- if you want to fulfill your contracts, you have to have bandwidth available in all the places where they might need it.

And if they are a large fraction of the total bandwidth that you're doing that -- then the utilization -- the actual utilization of that can be really low. But you have a very large base of commercial business. And it's a lot easier to blend that contract in and still get really good efficient use of your resources. So that's one of the sources of synergy.

And we've seen that over in the government contracts that we already have, which are the ones that use our own bandwidth primarily In the Americas -- with Sat-3. We'll get the same effect when we go [Inaudible]. The other area that's really important is that from -- should you look at the way that networks are evolving, government satellite networks are often an augmentation of what's starting terrestrially. So having this really interesting blend of the important terrestrial tactical networks, less out of the satellite networks that are used along -- inside those gives us an opportunity to optimize both.

So again, it's a really good way for us to compete more effectively in the defense market than someone who doesn't have an access to the combination of broadband capabilities and organic defense capability that we do. So we find a real advantage in those in the market.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

The only -- the other thing I would add there is there have been times when we have had a lot of credit for our government business, and there's times when we -- seems like we don't get it. I think those are transitory. And I don't like it when it's like this, but I think it's transitory.

Phil Cusick -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

OK. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Mike Crawford -- B. Riley Securities -- Analyst

Thank you. On the satellite services side, we saw that you got the landing rights in Nigeria. What about progress in other regions where we should be looking for continued extension of your landing rights globally?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Mark, do you want to talk about that?

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

I think we -- so right now, what we're doing on a global basis is a lot of times we're using partner bandwidth [Inaudible] markets. And so that -- the example in Nigeria is one where we set up a specific network for that. I think that you'll see us getting landing rights in those areas -- in more areas as, you know, we get our own coverage in those areas. That's probably the -- that will be the main factor that will drive that.

So that will be -- Americas will be the first place because we can do some of that with ViaSat-2 and also some of the partner with ViaSat-3 coming. Also, we're not always going to make announcements around any rights. It will really depend on the specific market.

Mike Crawford -- B. Riley Securities -- Analyst

OK, thank you. And then on the commercial network, so is there -- Can you talk about, for this current fiscal '22, how much of that would be like antennas, the OneWeb and others versus, say, satellite payloads and IFC or satellite equipment for your own users, broadband this year, and then how that's going to shift over the next couple of years once ViaSat-3 starts to dominate a little bit more?

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

You know, one of the biggest areas where we had a really strong awards last year, and we see this continuing, is in full-motion antennas, which are essentially ground segment for different forms of observation satellites. So that's about new space -- that new space buzzword. A fair amount of it's in communications and a lot of it is in things that relate to observation. So there's a lot over demand for ground networks for that.

And so some of that is -- some of that are custom orders that we've received for those types of products. Another area that's a little bit small but it's been growing pretty well are components that are used in space systems out of that government, but there's opportunities for government and commercial in there as well. Those are the two fastest-growing parts of the commercial networks. In this coming year, in-plant connectivity equipment is going to be a contributor to that, the growth there as well.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Overall, Mike, over the next two years, Mark's right that, that's from an external standpoint, you can look at that -- over the next two years, I'd say, well over half of it is of ViaSat-3 related payloads and ground segment employment that's going to occur through that segment just from a cost standpoint.

Mike Crawford -- B. Riley Securities -- Analyst

OK. Thank you. And then just a couple more. One, back to RigNet, you said the integration costs are going to kind of offset synergies this year.

But can you quantify that for this year?

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So I think what I would think about, as you look longer out, there are some further opportunities, bandwidth, and so forth as we get the ViaSat-3 Constellation. On the near term, it's really going to be what I would associate with, you know, all the traditional public company costs, you know, those kind of elements in G&A.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

It's probably in the $10 million to $15 million range, Mike.

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, that's a good range.

Mike Crawford -- B. Riley Securities -- Analyst

OK, thanks. And then last question from me. If you just looked at your data link business, which I think would be mostly, if not all, government systems like -- what is the order of magnitude of revenue generated from that business today and profitability compared with government systems as a whole in case that was one that was -- could potentially be carved out?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I mean, that's hypothetical. So I think that we're not -- right now, it's on plan. We have an integrated business that, like Mark said, that utilizes all of that stuff. So we've talked before about roughly having something pretty close to a third, you know, in that kind of area, a third to a little bit higher in that area than our services business and our cybersecurity stuff, and then satellite, like modems and that kind of stuff in the rest of the area.

So it's split kind of like that but really don't disclose the pieces.

Mike Crawford -- B. Riley Securities -- Analyst

OK, all right. Thank you very much.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Mike.

Operator

[Operator instructions]

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

OK. We'll take -- why don't we take one more and -- yeah, one more call -- one more question.

Operator

Thank you, sir. Our last question is from the line of Chris Quilty with Quilty Analytics. Your line is open.

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

Thanks. I wanted to follow up on just a couple of commentary or a couple of points that were in the commentary. One of them indicated that the margins in the services business will likely be pressured toward the back end of the year as you start to roll out some of the costs associated with ViaSat-3. Shawn, should we expect that mostly around the fourth quarter? Or should we see the margins pressuring down before then?

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. What I would think about it, Chris, is those costs that -- the start-up costs coming on for ViaSat-3, what they tend to do is scale or ramp as we bring up the network. And so they kind of trickle in earlier. And then, yes, you're right, get a little bit heavier on the back end.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So, they've already started, right, they've already started. And it's -- I think Shawn described it exactly -- it's like a ramp. And so the fourth quarter will be the biggest quarter by far. And certainly, it accelerates in that time frame as we get closer to launching the satellite and up and going.

But we can't wait until the last second to start, you know? And we've already started and we've got land and we're putting satellite access nodes and we're running tests. We're lighting some of the fiber rings up. That will just ramp as we go throughout the year. But fourth quarter will be definitely way heavier than the other quarters.

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

Understand. And I think, you know, also at the start of COVID, you had a layoff of a couple of hundred people on the IFC side. Presumably, you're going to be bringing back some of those people also as the business scales. And so does that also play into the margin compression?

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

No. I mean I don't think so. We never – you know, just because one area gets hit, that's not the only area. I'd say well over half of the employees that were -- that left were in administrative functions.

So we try to preserve the people that are actually in the operating space as much as possible. And it was well over that. I think it was more like 70%. So that adds back in those areas will definitely lag the business.

And, you know, the plan would be to, as we go forward, to get as efficient as we can. But we won't be out of employees. We're definitely hiring.

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

That's good to know. On the government side, the SDA has made some pretty favorable comments around the role that Link 16 will eventually play in the space force's whole proliferated LEO. Can you kind of give us an update on where you're at in that program in terms of timing or other new developments?

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

Other developments around Link 16, is that the question?

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

Yes, specifically the Link 16 LEO effort and how that might be fit into the SDA's plans?

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

Yeah. So just interesting in general, I think different as usual in parts of DoD and [Inaudible] perspective on it. From the SDA perspective, what we're looking for is really to kind of -- fundamental transmission capability, which can be used throughout the multiple applications. And like you're seeing with them incorporating [Inaudible] is the recognition of the demand there is for Link 16 connectivity and especially for new applications of Link 16 that are long haul toward Link's communications.

But there's other organizations that are more Link 16, either side, also see specific application as those that just had to be part of kind of a transition portfolio. So we're working with, I would say, both sides of that. And there's definitely opportunities for -- in addition on the application side where the space connectivity can be more than just really -- or just one element of the broad portfolio. And so that is still to be determined.

I think one thing that's really interesting about the team is -- that we've talked about in the past is that real rapid growth in a number of new network participants like a team. And those include things like sensors and weapons, as well as [Inaudible]. So having a broader array of participants creates new to interesting applications for participants in there. And I think it's kind of driving Link 16 [Inaudible] space.

Does that help answer your question?

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

Yes, I wanted you to give me a number.

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

No [Inaudible].

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

I'm just being honest. OK. So let me ask one final question, which is the Government Services revenue, I think, was a record at $80 million in the quarter. And you also had some commentary around, you know, that being a big driver once ViaSat-3 comes online.

And I guess my question is, I think most of the stuff that you do today is Ku-band ArcLight. Do you need a new contract vehicle or new hardware to migrate aircraft from, you know, legacy Ku-band ArcLight network onto new ViaSat-3 high throughput Ka?

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

No [Inaudible] a lot of the programs that we won over the last two years, especially maybe [Inaudible] a little bit further than that are really the connected platforms and I think our customers [Inaudible] global capability that, that brings. So all those [Inaudible] most of those contracts especially contemplate migration to Ka-band. Some of them already include the hardware component that -- some of them include [Inaudible] Ka-band as well. So I'd say the road is well paved for that -- for the customer base that we have.

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

Got it. And Mark, I assume you're like calling in on an Inmarsat or Intelsat network because you got a bad connection. It's not a ViaSat-3 call.

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

Sorry about that. 

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

No problem.

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

I'm not going to name names.

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

All right. Thank you.

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

Thanks, Chris.

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

And I guess that was the last call. So thanks, everybody, for joining. We appreciate it. Again, we had -- I'm definitely proud of our people and the performance this year.

I think the hurdle was a lot higher than what may have been obvious to everybody. It's really, really a tough year, but the team did a fantastic job. And we're -- things are accelerating. So we look at a growth year in our fiscal year '22.

And we're really confident in both achieving the outlook and giving these satellite slots. So we'll see you next quarter.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 38 minutes

Call participants:

Rick Baldridge -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Robert Blair -- Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary

Ric Prentiss -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Shawn Duffy -- Chief Financial Officer

Simon Flannery -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Mark Dankberg -- Executive Chairman

Phil Cusick -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Mike Crawford -- B. Riley Securities -- Analyst

Chris Quilty -- Quilty Analytics -- Analyst

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