Iridium Posts 11 Percent Drop In 3Q Profit

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Satellite phone company Iridium Communications Inc. on Thursday posted a profit of $15 million for its latest quarter, down 11 percent from a year ago.

It was the first quarterly report to public shareholders on the Iridium satellite constellation in about a decade. The original Iridium company fell into bankruptcy in 1999, and was privately held until Sept. 29 of this year, when a Nasdaq-listed acquisition vehicle of private equity firm Greenhill & Co. bought it and changed its own name to Iridium Communications.

Iridium said the decline in net income was due to acquisition-related expenses. Excluding those, net income would have increased 36 percent, it said.

Revenue fell 4.3 percent to $84.5 million. The decrease was due to lower sales of satellite phones, which the company attributed to the recession. However, it added subscribers, ending the quarter with about 359,000, up 16 percent from a year ago.

Shares of the Bethesda, Md., company rose 10 cents to $9.50 in afternoon trading.

Analyst Christopher King at Stifel Nicolaus called the results "solid," but said the company has to attract a lot more business to justify the planned $2.7 billion investment in a new generation of satellites, scheduled to start going up in 2014.