Immarsat plc issues an Interim Management Statement on Q1 2012 reults, reports growth in marine data provision revenue
Excerpts relevant to the marine sector of the business are as follows:
Rupert Pearce, Inmarsat's Chief Executive Officer, said: "The results for the first quarter are in line with our expectations and give us confidence in our outlook. Strong subscriber growth of over 10% in the first quarter continues to underpin our expectations for improved results in 2012. In addition, we are encouraged by rapidly developing market interest in our XpressLink service and in the partnerships we are forming for our Global Xpress service."
Growth in our maritime data revenue resulted primarily from the impact of pricing initiatives, in particular as a result of the elimination of volume discounts previously available for older services where we are encouraging customer migration to our FleetBroadband service.
In addition, we added 2,010 FleetBroadband terminals during the quarter, showing that take up of this service remains strong. Although maritime voice revenue was down year over year, this is largely due to the impact of voice price reductions implemented in the second quarter of 2011. While economic conditions in shipping remain challenging, we remain comfortable with the customer usage trends we are seeing and have a positive outlook for our maritime business in 2012.
Interest in our XpressLink service also continues to build rapidly and we recently announced the appointment of a number of leading maritime communications specialists as dealers for this important new service. Some of these dealers have already concluded agreements with shipping companies to purchase XpressLink. XpressLink is a unique hybrid service combining FleetBroadband with Ku-band connectivity for a fixed monthly price. We believe XpressLink will gain meaningful market traction during 2012 and will contribute to revenue reported for our Inmarsat Solutions business.