A view of Globalstar offices. Photo credit: Globalstar

Globalstar increased its overall 2023 guidance on Thursday after reporting 53% year-over-year growth in the third quarter.

Globalstar raised the low end of its guidance for the second time this year, after raising it in Q2. The company now expects 2023 total revenue to range between $215 and $230 million. Original guidance was between $185 million and $230 million. 

Company revenue in Q3 increased 53% to $57.7 million, compared to the third quarter of 2022, with higher service revenue, partially due to the Apple emergency messaging service. 

Globalstar also reported growth in Commercial IoT, which saw a revenue increase of 36% from the third quarter of 2022. The company said subscriber activations have been up this year, and the third quarter set a record for gross subscriber activations since the company started selling Commercial IoT products.

Net loss was $6.2 million for the third quarter of 2023, compared to net loss of $204.4 million for the third quarter of 2022. 

Globalstar’s new CEO Paul Jacobs led a call with investors on Thursday. Jacobs is the former CEO of Qualcomm and founder of XCOM Labs. He told investors he joined Globalstar because the company fits with his vision of where connectivity is heading. 

“I’m excited by the combination of space assets and terrestrial,” he said. “Some of the opportunities that we see on the terrestrial side, which we were focused on at XCOM Labs, can be enhanced by space-based tracking. Logistics and transportation is a great example of that. [I’m excited about] both private networks and the convergence between satellite and terrestrial networks.”

Jacobs addressed the developing satellite-to-cell market and how this capability may evolve as more players target the market. He said Globalstar’s focus with its current offering its for a low data rate that is cheap, ubiquitous and widespread that can serve many users. 

“One of the ways serving a lot of users is [possible is] because users don’t necessarily need to use the system all the time,” Jacobs said. “Just providing that connectivity, not necessarily throughput, is what’s important so that information can get back.” 

Whether the market evolves into higher data rate use cases via satellite, will “depend on consumer willingness to pay for having very high data rate connections through a satellite connection. I think remains to be seen,” he added.