COM DEV Bucks Canadian Space Sector Trend

It’s been a pretty good start to the year for COM DEV, the Cambridge based international space systems company. On April 12th the company reported improved profitability in its quarterly earnings report. Since then they’ve booked three new orders worth US $21 million including a new order today.

And while many Canadian companies struggle with a down domestic market plagued by uncertainty, COM DEV CEO Mike Pley said on the Business News Network on April 13th that the company had positioned itself to rely more on the export market.
COM DEV said the new contract booked today for $15 million is to deliver coaxial and waveguide switches for use on two commercial satellites providing high-speed broadband service to rural and remote areas of Australia.

“This is a record amount for a contract in our Switch Business Unit and it illustrates the sheer size of the new generation of high-throughput satellites,” said Mike Williams, president of COM DEV International Products. “It has been won thanks to our history of providing exceptional value to our customer married with our ongoing investment in this exciting new business area. Furthermore, the scale of our production facility makes us one of the very few suppliers in the world with sufficient capacity to deliver on an order of this magnitude.”

Earlier today, exactEarth, a COM DEV subsidiary jointly owned by Spain’s HISDESAT Servicios Estratgicos S.A., announced a new deal of its own whereby VesselTracker GmbH, a provider of global coastal AIS data and maritime information will market services deploying exactEarth exactAIS satellite data into their global commercial applications market.

COM DEV’s stock has rebounded this year and closed the day up 7.57% to $2.70.

About Marc Boucher

Boucher is an entrepreneur, writer, editor & publisher. He is the founder of SpaceQ Media Inc. and CEO and co-founder of SpaceRef Interactive LLC. Boucher has 20+ years working in various roles in the space industry and a total of 30 years as a technology entrepreneur including creating Maple Square, Canada's first internet directory and search engine.

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