Viasat Inc. (VSAT)

Analyst Targets

• Deutsche Bank – Buy – $97 (raised from $48)
• Raymond James – Outperform – $93 (raised from $74)
• B. Riley Securities – Buy – $106 (raised from $94)
• Needham – Buy – $90 (raised from $58)
• Consensus (TipRanks, 9 analysts) – Strong Buy – Avg. target $95.29

The Day SpaceX Changed the Benchmark

Today is the day. SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq under ticker SPCX at a fixed price of $135 per share, locking in a $1.77 trillion valuation and raising $75 billion in what is officially the largest IPO in history. To put that number in context: SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 and still posted a net operating loss of $4.2 billion. The market does not care. It is pricing a future, not a spreadsheet.

What matters for everyone else in the satellite space is what comes next. When a company of this scale goes public at a valuation that dwarfs every comparable peer, institutional capital begins looking sideways. Who else operates real infrastructure? Who is already generating revenue? Who has orbital assets, contracted customers, and actual barriers to entry?

That search lands on Viasat.

What Viasat Actually Does

Viasat (NASDAQ: VSAT) is a global satellite communications company with three core revenue verticals: commercial aviation inflight connectivity, maritime broadband, and government defense systems. Following its acquisition of Inmarsat, the combined platform serves commercial airlines, cargo fleets, naval operators, and government clients across virtually every ocean and continent. It is not a startup. It is not a concept. Viasat closed fiscal year 2026 with $4.64 billion in revenue, a record high, up from $4.52 billion the prior year, and generated positive free cash flow for five consecutive quarters.

The company ended FY2026 with 6,550 commercial air and business aviation aircraft in service. It launched full, fast, and free Wi-Fi models with American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and KLM. The 1,000th aircraft entered service using Viasat’s SwiftBroadband-Safety (SB-S) certified safety communications platform. Aviation revenue per aircraft continued to grow year-over-year.

On the maritime side, NexusWave – Viasat’s fully managed, bonded multi-orbit connectivity service combining GEO Ka-band, LEO, LTE, and L-band networks – ended the year with 1,350 vessels in service and an additional 1,500 orders in backlog. The new VS60 maritime terminal achieved download speeds exceeding 250 Mbps in sea trials. Fleet operators including EXMAR Gas Carriers and Evergreen Marine, Taiwan’s largest container line, have committed to full fleetwide NexusWave rollouts. Management noted that the upgrade is expected to reduce fleetwide operating expenditure for adopting customers by consolidating connectivity under a single provider.

Worth noting separately: the defense segment posted 12% year-over-year revenue growth in Q4 FY2026 and achieved record contract awards of $580 million in information security and cyber defense. Viasat also won a prime contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command on June 11 to build and launch satellites for a proliferated fleet, and landed part of a combined $437.7 million U.S. Air Force delivery contract alongside Intelsat General Communications.

The Constellation Is Almost Complete

ViaSat-3 Flight 2, covering the Americas, successfully launched in November 2025 and completed all deployments including reflectors and boom. ViaSat-3 Flight 3, covering the Asia-Pacific region, launched in April 2026 and is expected to enter service in August or September 2026. Each satellite is designed to carry more bandwidth capacity than Viasat’s entire prior fleet combined. With more than 1,000 steerable spot beams per satellite, bandwidth can be moved dynamically to match demand across shipping lanes, flight corridors, and offshore locations.

This is the operational catalyst the stock has been waiting for. Revenue growth in both aviation and maritime has been constrained by legacy capacity limits. VS-3 removes that ceiling. Management has guided toward FY2027 positive free cash flow of approximately $180 million despite capital expenditures of $950 million to $1 billion, supported by a record contract backlog of $4.07 billion, up 15% from the prior year.

Bull / Base / Bear

Bull: VS-3 F2 and F3 enter full commercial service on schedule. Aviation revenue per aircraft accelerates. NexusWave vessel count scales materially beyond 1,350. The Defense and Advanced Technologies segment gets spun out or separately valued, unlocking what Raymond James estimates as substantial sum-of-the-parts upside. Net debt continues declining from the current $4.84 billion. Stock closes the gap toward analyst targets in the $90 to $106 range.

Base: VS-3 enters service on the current timeline. Aviation and maritime revenue grow modestly. Defense contracts continue at record pace. Free cash flow turns positive in FY2027 as guided. Net debt leverage ratio continues declining toward the company’s sub-3x target. Stock grinds higher but stays in a range as institutional buyers wait for execution proof.

Bear: VS-3 service entry is delayed again. Maritime vessel count growth stalls. Aviation competition from Starlink’s direct-to-aircraft offering intensifies faster than expected. Net debt reduction stalls if free cash flow disappoints. Q1 FY2027 EPS is already estimated at a loss of $0.33. Any miss could shake confidence before the VS-3 commercial contribution is visible in the numbers.

Balance Sheet and Valuation Context

Net debt stood at $4.84 billion as of March 31, 2026, down from $5.59 billion a year earlier. The company redeemed all $442.6 million in senior notes due 2025 and repaid the remaining $300 million of the original Inmarsat term loan ahead of its 2026 maturity date. Adjusted EBITDA for FY2026 was a record $1.55 billion. The net loss narrowed sharply to $34.1 million from a much larger loss in FY2025. Liquidity at year-end was $2.9 billion.

Raymond James estimates Viasat’s spectrum portfolio alone could be worth approximately $16 billion, excluding the portion leased to ASTS and Ligado. That figure nearly doubles the company’s current market capitalization. Whether the market ever ascribes that value is a different question, but it frames the asymmetry in the bull case.

Bottom Line

SpaceX’s public debut today does one concrete thing for the satellite sector: it forces a harder look at what revenue-generating space infrastructure is actually worth. Viasat is not SpaceX. It does not have Starlink’s subscriber growth or Starship’s ceiling. What it does have is a completed global GEO constellation, contracted airline and maritime customers, a defense segment hitting record awards, and a balance sheet that is visibly improving quarter after quarter.

Nine analysts carry a Strong Buy consensus with an average price target of $95.29. The stock is still working through the noise of an earnings miss last week and elevated capex. But the structural case is getting cleaner, not murkier. That tension is where opportunities tend to form.

For informational purposes only.