The newly combined Viasat and Inmarsat satellite company has issued its first financial results for the second quarter of the year, showing modest growth despite setbacks on two new satellite deployments.

The organisation said it would be cutting 10% of its workforce in an earlier market announcement.

Viasat — the US-listed and California-based company — finalised its acquisition of major maritime broadband provider Inmarsat earlier this year in a $7.3bn deal, acquiring it from a consortium of private investors.

Both companies are investing in new satellite launches; ViaSat with a trio of Ka-band geostationary satellites and London-based Inmarsat with its sixth-generation constellation.

Revenue rose year on year to $1.225bn from $745m in the quarter, but operating income fell from a net profit of $27m to a loss of $804m over the same period.

Ebitda for the period was $486m, compared with $188m a year earlier.

The drop in operating income for the quarter is partly due to write-downs on three satellites, two of which were among the new wave of modern satellites being launched.

The company has downplayed the impact of the loss of these two new satellites to customers.

One was a geostationary Ka-band Viasat-3 satellite that failed to deploy properly over the Americas and will likely only have 10% of the expected throughput. Another was the second of Inmarsat’s sixth generation satellite, I6 F2, which failed to deploy after being launched and is not expected to be of use.

The Inmarsat I6 is part of the company’s first dual payload series able to offer its customers, including shipping, both Ka-band and L-band connectivity.

The three satellites will lead to a $900m write-down on the books, but the company is putting in an insurance claim for about $349m for the Inmarsat I6 failure and $421m for the ViaSat failure. There are plans and a budget to replace the Inmarsat satellite, according to Viasat chairman and chief executive Mark Dankberg.

Ahead of promoting modest financial results, the US company also announced last week its intention to cut 10% of its workforce — or about 800 employees.

It said it is seeking $100m in annual expense savings following the acquisition. The organisation remains hesitant to put specific details on how much growth it will predict in the coming two years as it works on synergies, but Dankberg did point to potential sweet spots when asked about this by investors.

“L-Band is well suited to low-cost, reliable weather-resistant coverage for emergency voice operational data and growing opportunity to integrate satellite and terrestrial coverage of IoT [Internet of Things] and mainstream mobile devices,” he said.

“There is overlap in customer base between L-band and broadband market.

“As part of our review, we are refining our strategy to make sure we are focused on the market segments and refining value propositions that resonate with customers.”

Dankberg also added that the opportunities with the Internet of Things and that device-to-device services hold a lot of interest. He said there will be more details on the impact of the acquisition when ViaSat holds an investor day in March 2024.

ViaSat and Inmarsat are competing in an increasingly competitive satellite connectivity market. While both satellite operators offer geostationary Ka-band and L-band offerings, new providers such as Starlink, OneWeb and even existing Ku-Band VSAT operators are launching new satellites to offer greater connectivity.

Market insiders suggest that the L-band and Ka-band markets may not be initially impacted due to different offerings to the maritime markets, but pricing and bandwidth availability will become increasingly sensitive touchpoints in the market.