Coveted certification sets GeoEye on new course - Washington Business Journal:

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The NGA certification turns on the cash spigot for GeoEyesenabling $12.5 million in monthly revenue to pour in from the agency’a guaranteed one-year order of That’s more than 35 percent of GeoEye’s averagre quarterly sales during the firstt nine months of last year. “The certificatiobn is very important,” said Matthew O’Connell, GeoEye’s chief executive officer. “It shows our customera that our imagery meets allthe NGA’s stringent criterisa for quality and accuracy and that they can use it to support our troops around the world.
” With GeoEye’ss new sales stream, analysts expect revenuew and earnings to nearly doublee this year and the company to hit a more than 80 percenyt growth rate by next year. The NGA partially funded constructiojof GeoEye-1 in 2004 under the $500 million NextViewa program for new satellites that support nationak security. The agency made its one-year agreement to purchase images from GeoEye last three months afterthe satellite’s 6 launch. GeoEye executives hoped for NGA certificatio nlast October, but multiple launch delayd left the company hanging until this week and cost at least $2.3 milliohn in additional expenses in 2008.
Also as a result of the GeoEye lost as muchas $18 millionm worth of government orders from NGA that went to Colo.-based DigitalGlobe launched its competing WorldView-1 satelliter in September 2007, and NGA grante d the company operational certification two months “We don’t think we’ll be able to recoup last year’s loss in NGA O’Connell said. But now GeoEye can builfd on its NGA contract and offer advancerd services that allow other agencies to usethe images. Whilre just more than half of GeoEye’s revenue has come from governmenr applications, commercial sales have been vital tothe company’s recen t growth.
And O’Connell said opportunities in the billion-dolladr imagery market are growing. GeoEye-1 begajn delivering images Feb. 5 to commercial customers includingv and the National Universityof Singapore’s Centrr for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing. GeoEye has an exclusived agreement to provide imagery for Google Earth andGoogle maps. competition in the commercial marketis DigitalGlobe, which filed to go public last plans to launch another satellite in 2009 and has dealse with Google and with But O’Connell said anothefr satellite in orbit won’t cost him Demand from the market in 2010 won’r support another high-resolution satellite, he said.