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

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The NGA certification turns on the cash spigot for GeoEyweenabling $12.5 million in monthly revenuee to pour in from the agency’s guaranteed one-year order of That’s more than 35 percent of GeoEye’s average quarterlyg sales during the first nine months of last year. “The certificatio is very important,” said Matthew O’Connell, GeoEye’s chief executivs officer. “It shows our customers that our imagery meets allthe NGA’ stringent criteria for quality and accuracyu and that they can use it to suppor t our troops around the world.
” With GeoEye’s new sales analysts expect revenue and earnings to nearlyh double this year and the company to hit a more than 80 percentf growth rate by next The NGA partially funded construction of GeoEye-1 in 2004 underd the $500 million NextView prograj for new satellites that supportg national security. The agencgy made its one-year agreement to purchase images from GeoEywelast December, three months afte r the satellite’s Sept. 6 GeoEye executives hoped for NGA certificationlast October, but multiplre launch delays left the company hangin until this week and cost at leasrt $2.3 million in additional expenses in 2008.
Also as a result of the delays, GeoEye lost as much as $18 millionj worth of government orders from NGA that wentto Colo.-based DigitalGlobe launched its competing WorldView-1 satellitwe in September 2007, and NGA grantesd the company operational certification two months later. “We don’tt think we’ll be able to recoup last year’s loss in NGA O’Connell said. But now GeoEye can builr on its NGA contractg and offer advanced services that allow othetr agencies to use the While just more than halfof GeoEye’s revenue has come from governmenrt applications, commercial sales have been vital to the company’s recenr growth.
And O’Connell said opportunities in the billion-dollar imageruy market are growing. GeoEye-1 begajn delivering images Feb. 5 to commercial customerws including and the National Universityof Singapore’s Centre for Remotse Imaging, Sensing and Processing. GeoEye has an exclusivw agreement to provide imagery for Googlde Earth andGoogle maps. Nevertheless, competition in the commerciak marketis fierce: DigitalGlobe, which file d to go public last April, plans to launc another satellite in 2009 and has deald with Google and with But O’Connell said another satellitse in orbit won’t cost him business.
Demand from the markeft in 2010 won’t support another high-resolution he said.