UrtheCast Reports 2016 First Quarter Financial Results

VANCOUVER, May 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - UrtheCast Corp. (TSX:UR) ("UrtheCast" or the "Company") today announces financial results for the three months ended on March 31, 2016.

The Company is pleased to report Q1 non-IFRS revenues of $6.8 million (IFRS - $12.2 million), a 106% increase over Q1 2015 non-IFRS revenue of $3.3 million (IFRS $5.9 million). While this represents significant year over year growth, the Company expects increasing, sequential growth for the remainder of 2016 and reaffirms its guidance to achieve non-IFRS revenue between $55 million and $60 million (representing an IFRS revenue range of $78 million to $83 million) in fiscal 2016.

UrtheCast has a strong outlook for its core Earth Observation (EO) business as the Company continues to emerge as a legitimate new entrant in the global EO market, demonstrated by over $200 million of outstanding bids as it enters its strongest revenue generating quarters. UrtheCast's Engineering Services business, aided by the recent amendment the $65 million contract from its largest customer, is also entering a period of accelerating growth.

The Company's non-IFRS adjusted EBITDA, excluding share-based payments, was a loss of $6.0 million in the first quarter compared to a profit of $0.9 million in 2015. (The profit in Q1 2015 was the result of business interruption insurance proceeds of $2.3 million). At March 31, 2016, the Company had total cash balances of $39.0 million and working capital of $33.4 million. The Company expects non-IFRS EBITDA to improve throughout fiscal 2016, reaching positive non-IFRS EBITDA in Q3 2016.

"We have completed many milestones in Q1 that will allow us to achieve our goals in 2016," explained Wade Larson, CEO and co-founder. "We have integrated our sales efforts with Deimos Imaging to offer our unique, integrated suite of four EO sensors globally, leading to quotes that have driven our total over $200 million, amended a contract with our largest customer to accelerate Engineering Services revenues, completed the flow of data from Deimos 1 to our UrthePlatform, developed a strong and growing sales funnel for our planned OptiSAR^TM constellation, and reached significant milestones in our Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) – all while maintaining a strong cash position and experiencing rapidly growing revenue."

Additional Recent Highlights

Integration of Deimos Imaging and Global Sales Efforts

• The Company has now fully integrated Deimos Imaging's operations and sales efforts to offer a unique, integrated suite of four EO sensors globally, and has developed a strong and growing sales funnel for the Company's EO imagery and planned OptiSAR™ Constellation.

UrthePlatform Update

• UrtheCast announced that, for the first time, newly-collected imagery from the Deimos-1 satellite is flowing to the UrthePlatform shortly after acquisition. UrtheCast anticipates that it will provide this broad-area-coverage Deimos-1 data cloud-free for the entire contiguous United States, each and every month, throughout the 2016 agricultural growing season, all available for extraction, on demand, in GeoTIFF format at affordable price points.

OptiSAR Progress

• UrtheCast recently announced it established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to focus research and development efforts on the operational effectiveness of the OptiSAR™ constellation, including data fusion, improving metric accuracy, and optimizing collection & dissemination strategies. This CRADA will allow UrtheCast to work closely with an experienced user and make early changes to its systems architecture, if deemed appropriate, to support UrtheCast's government and commercial customer base.
• UrtheCast signed a Contribution Agreement under the Space Technologies Development Program, implemented by the Canadian Space Agency, for $2.0 million of funding to aid UrtheCast in the development of the OptiSAR™ constellation.
• UrtheCast reached an agreement with its largest customer on the previously announced US$65 million contract to re-allocate all of the funds previously earmarked for future data purchases to engineering services. With the amendment, the entire US$65 million contract is now for engineering services. This amendment will increase the monthly revenues of the Company beginning in mid-2016 to early-2018.
• UrtheCast announced it successfully completed prototyping and testing the hardware of the principal core enabling elements of the Company's SAR technology. It has been developed through numerous innovations and has resulted in the filing of multiple patent applications. The tests have proven that the core SAR technology works, demonstrating that the technical and programmatic risks of the OptiSAR Constellation development program have been reduced.
• UrtheCast continues to fill the sales funnel for the planned OptiSAR™ constellation, with multiple MOUs signed and discussions at various stages of maturity. UrtheCast will provide further updates as these discussions progress.

SELECTED FINANCIAL INFORMATION

The following table provides selected financial information of the Company, which was derived from, and should be read in conjunction with, the audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2015.

As previously announced, UrtheCast will host a conference call regarding its 2016 first quarter financial results at 4:45 p.m. ET (1:45 p.m. PT) on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 immediately prior to its annual general and special meeting of shareholders.

An archived version of the conference call will be made available on the Company's investor website (investors.urthecast.com) following the live conference call.

The live conference call will be available by calling toll-free at 866-696-5910, or by toll call at 416-340-2217. The participant pass code is 4793347.

ABOUT URTHECAST CORP.

UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company that serves the rapidly evolving geospatial and geoanalytics markets with a wide range of information-rich products and services. The Company currently operates four Earth Observation sensors in space, including two cameras aboard the International Space Station and two satellites, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2. Imagery and video data captured by these sensors is downlinked to ground stations across the planet and displayed on the UrthePlatform, or distributed directly to partners and customers. UrtheCast is also developing and anticipates launching the world's first fully-integrated constellation of multispectral optical and SAR satellites, called OptiSAR™, in addition to its proposed UrtheDaily™ constellation concept, which the Company believes will together revolutionize monitoring of our planet with high-quality, medium and high-resolution, and high-coverage and high-revisit imagery in all weather conditions, any time of day. Common shares of UrtheCast trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ticker 'UR'.

For more information, visit UrtheCast's website at www.urthecast.com.

Non-IFRS Financial Measures

The Company prepares its financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"), as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board. This release includes certain non-IFRS financial measures, such as non-IFRS revenues, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. The Company uses these non-IFRS financial measures as supplemental indicators of its operating performance and financial position. These measures do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS and therefore are unlikely to be comparable to the calculation of similar measures used by other companies, and should not be viewed as alternatives to measures of financial performance calculated in accordance with IFRS or considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. These non-IFRS financial measures should be read in conjunction with the Company's financial statements and accompanying MD&A.

Forward-Looking Information

This release contains certain information which, as presented, constitutes "forward-looking information" or "forward-oriented financial information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information involves statements that relate to future events and often addresses expected future business and financial performance, containing words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect" and "guidance", statements that an action or event "may", "might", "could" or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions and includes, but is not limited to, statements relating to: UrtheCast's expectations with respect its current sensors and proposed OptiSAR™ constellation and UrtheDaily^TM  concept; financial guidance for the 2016 financial year; anticipated cash and financing needs; its plans for and timing of expansion of its product offering and value-added services; its future growth and operations plans; expectations regarding its sales funnel; and anticipated trends and challenges in its business and the markets in which it operates. Such statements reflect UrtheCast's current views with respect to future events. Such statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by UrtheCast, are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors could cause UrtheCast's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, among others: any delays or failures in the design, development, construction, launch and operational commissioning of the proposed OptiSAR™ constellation; the Company being unable to convert the Memoranda of Understanding in respect of funding of the OptiSAR™ constellation into binding, definitive agreements; failures aboard the International Space Station ("ISS") or the Deimos-1 or Deimos-2 satellites; failure to obtain, or loss of, regulatory approvals; uncertainties and assumptions in UrtheCast's revenue forecasts; as well as those factors and assumptions discussed in UrtheCast's annual information form dated March 29, 2016, (the "AIF"), which is available under UrtheCast's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information is developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors set out herein, in the AIF, and as disclosed from time to time on UrtheCast's SEDAR profile. UrtheCast undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by Canadian securities laws. Readers are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements.

SOURCE UrtheCast Corp.

Related Links

www.urthecast.com