SAS have a ‘first mover advantage’ in the field of completely...

SAS have a ‘first mover advantage’ in the field of completely autonomous communication nanosatellites. With regards to the competitors in the same field as SAS, there simply are none yet.

The constellation that SAS are striving to build are able to continually communicate with each other, in turn allowing them to maintain a flawless relationship (spatial & otherwise) with one another while they are in orbit. In addition to this, each satellite is self-diagnosing, notifying the ground team of any changes in their performance, in turn allowing them to send software remedies to rectify any faults that they may have. I think Meir also said that they would also only require a ground staff of around 30 people to maintain the entire constellation. That’s an insanely small number of staff required for the size of company this could one day be.

Thereby making them cheaper to build, cheaper to launch and cheaper to maintain than any other telecommunication infrastructure currently available or any that I’m currently aware is being constructed.

This allows SAS to provide very large and substantial savings on current satellite telecommunication rates.

The entire constellation of 200 nanosats are expected to cost a total of $160 million. In their last investor presentation, following the deployment of the first 100 nanosats by 2018/2019, SAS expects revenue potential in the order of $300-$500 million p/a. Meaning that, with only half of the initial constellation, by their minimum expectation, they are generating revenue nearly double the cost of the entire constellation of 200. And following the deployment of the entire constellation of 200, they expect revenue potential in the order of $600 million to $1 billion p/a – all of which is expected by the end of 2020.

They’ve left it to our imagination as far revenue potential regarding the global constellation of 1000 nanosats by 2022.

With SAS only having just launched the first 3 of 200 – 1000 nanosats (of which are only a meager 6 – 8 weeks out from generating revenue) there is plenty of upside remaining.