Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator instructions) And we’ll take our first question from Ted Kundtz with Needham. Please go ahead.
Ted Kundtz – Needham
Yes. Hello, everyone. Couple of questions for you. John, you are – I know last time we spoke, the last conference call was – you were looking at the communications systems business really a – sort of in the range of $160 million in total this year and then dropping down to the $110 million reflecting the completion of that large contract. A, do you still feel that’s the right number? I guess that’s part of your $250 million goal. And secondly, what kind of visibility do you have on that so far? And what do you expect the mix would be between the US and international side of that business?
John Kavazanjian
Okay. So – good question. First, we haven’t changed our outlook on that. I think if anything because of the repeater product, we are a little more optimistic about that segment. In terms of SATCOM, there is still a multi-year SATCOM project going on. We know that it’s funded in the supplemental, which is passed and passed out to all the services. We’re expecting – most of the contracting action is kind of quiet in October as the Pentagon dispenses the budget money to people before it gets down to the different commands. So we’re expecting – I hate to always predict when the government is going to let contracts, but we’re expecting them to start letting contracts of that in the next few months. And so we think that business for next year is in pretty good shape. Internationally, there are some prospects for the SATCOM systems. Whether they happen – but we’re not counting on them in 2009. Whether they happen in ’09 or 2010, I think some of the other people in the world who have man-pack radios and vehicle-based systems. Allies that we have are looking at SATCOM on the move and they are coming to us to look at our systems. So I think that’s a potential for doing better in that segment next year than we projected. On the Tactical Repeater side, we have some – some of that’s in our forecast for next year, but it’s a huge opportunity outside of the US military, which does use handheld radios – but outside of the US military, a lot of the services in the world, it really is a predominant method of communication. And there is – like I said, there’s virtually nobody we’ve talked to who isn’t interested immediately in a portable repeater. I mean, repeaters predominantly used to be big ground station installations, and then the portable ones really weren’t transportable except on the back of a vehicle. And this is basically a suitcase. And so we are pretty optimistic about this. I think there is real opportunity there. And I think the work we did to do the link repeater, which lets us build networks of these, and both the SATCOM systems and stuff, right from a ground radio just – and makes it a pretty good value proposition to people. So I think next year, I think we’re pretty confident in our plan. And if parts of it don’t happen the way we expect it, there are other parts we can make up with, because we have a pretty solid business there.
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