Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Paul Coster – J. P. Morgan.
Paul Coster – J. P. Morgan
Can you update us on the status of the IKONOS and Orb View satellites and their useful life in particular?
Matthew O’Connell
I think I’ll turn that over to Bill Schuster since he’s sitting next to me.
William Schuster
With regards to IKONOS, we’ve had a good year. There have been no abnormal events. We don’t see any reason at this time to doubt that it will be around for several more years. GeoEye-1 continues to perform perfectly and we stick with the period over which we’re depreciating for the expected life of nine years.
Paul Coster – J. P. Morgan
As we look out to 2010, your initial thoughts point to 10% to 15% top line growth. Should we think of the growth as being equally distributed across the regional, the domestic intelligence and the production services businesses or will certain segments benefit disproportionately?
Joseph Greeves
In our modeling we try to be conservative. We think that the second half will be stronger as we made some investments. We think the production services will continue to grow. We expect growth in our commercial business, and we expect continued growth in the international business and we’re being conservative in the U.S. Government business.
Paul Coster – J. P. Morgan
The NGA, is there any reason to believe that it will be expanded to include more companies than the incumbents, Vista Global and GeoEye?
Matthew O’Connell
Obviously we look at that hard, but I think that given the sensitivity of that procurement, it’s probably best for us to not comment in any detail on the process they’re running.
Paul Coster – J. P. Morgan
GeoEye, how close are we now to being self funded assuming a late 2012 launch?
Joseph Greeves
We’re not going to get into too much detail on that, but with the funds we raised and our cash flow we are pretty close to being self funded.
Paul Coster – J. P. Morgan
Now that Vista Global’s worldview two is up, the commission is hopefully near the end of this year, what impact do you think that has on pricing for GeoEye-1?
Matthew O’Connell
That’s a good question. By the way, I called Jill as soon as they launched and said congratulations because the important thing about that from an industry perspective is it helps persuade people like the U.S. Government that the commercial industry really is real.
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