GeoEye: Interview with the CEO and CFO

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking with Matt O’Connell and Henry Dubois, the CEO and CFO of GeoEye, Inc. (Nasdaq: GEOY) respectively, in a recorded audio format.

The interview covered a broad range of topics from what GeoEye does, to the launch of GeoEye-1 and GeoEye’s upcoming prospects in the satellite mapping industry.

I’ve posted the interview in its entirety at the end of this article.

Just in case you didn’t already know, GeoEye is a provider of space-based and aerial imagery and geospatial information.

Its imagery information products enable customers to map, measure, and monitor the earth for intelligence gathering, precision mapping, construction planning, and environmental monitoring applications, among others.

Here are some of the topics that were discussed at length in the 30 min. interview:

- How Matt O’Connell came to be CEO of GeoEye:

Matt discussed his transition from the investment banking world to the CEO of GeoEye. Post 9-11, as GeoEye’s predecessor company was having financial difficulties, Matt was invited to stick around and lead the turnaround of what is presently known as GeoEye.

- Discussion about the satellite mapping industry, applications and trends:

Matt further elaborates on how GeoEye’s imagery is being introduced and utilized in applications that just 3-4 years ago didn’t even exist.

GeoEye's imagery is used for things like Google Earth (NASDAQ: GOOG) and other online portals that use mapping technology, for navigational devices made by Tom Tom and Garmin (NASDAQ: GRMN), and for all sorts of new applications like airport mapping and crop management.

- GeoEye’s only US competitor, DigialGlobe (NYSE: DGI) and GeoEye’s competitive advantages:

Matt touched on what he felt were GeoEye’s distinct competitive advantages, such as catering more to the business-to-business market, their ability to drill down and add more information and mapping technologies to their images, and their superior customer service and ground station network, among others.

Needless to say, Matt feels strongly that GeoEye is well positioned to maintain its market lead in this space.

- Discussion about the launch of GeoEye-1, the insurance costs and how GeoEye would survive should any problems arise:

CFO Henry Dubois, explained the type of insurance that GeoEye has for launch and the first year on-orbit, should anything go wrong with GeoEye-1.

In addition, Matt went into great detail about the team in place and their success rates in these types of launches, all above 95% in terms of launching and equipment check-out.

- The recent stock price decline, investor miscommunication, and insider buying:

I went over this in a previous post when I discussed GeoEye’s last earnings announcement.

On the call I talked to Matt about what GeoEye is doing to allay investor unrest and misunderstandings so that the stock price decline that we recently had does not happen again.

We also talked about Matt’s and Henry’s recent insider purchases and why they didn’t purchase more shares on the open market with the stock reaching multi-year lows.

Matt shared that in addition to wanting to purchase more shares should they stay relatively cheap, he also thinks that the stock price overall is not fairly valued.

- The recent government pronouncements concerning purchasing more satellite imagery from GeoEye and DigitalGlobe:

Recently the government announced that they would be purchasing up to $1 billion worth of imagery from GeoEye and DigitalGlobe.

Unfortunately, this came with some possible caveats that might amount to nothing, or be a very big deal to GeoEye’s fortunes going forward.

Listen Now

I know that when it comes to GeoEye, the stock and the company, there is a lot of confusion and misinformation both in the retail trading environment as well as on Wall Street.

I invite you to listen to my interview with Matt and Henry below so that you can better understand the GeoEye story and get to know management.

GeoEye Interview:

Download MP3

Oh, and if you are interested in learning more about the launch, and tracking the launch, of GeoEye-1, GeoEye’s next generation satellite that took 4 years in the making and will be launched on August 22, 2008, GeoEye provided a web page dedicated to constant updates and real-time streaming video of the launch.

You can visit that here:

http://launch.geoeye.com

New to the GeoEye story?

• Read my initial buy recommendation here.
• or read about the company’s latest management conference call and earnings release here.