Charlie Ergen’s grand plan to save his EchoStar and Dish Network businesses remain a substantial work in progress as the recently combined entity continues to bleed opportunities and search for desperately needed financing.

Those businesses posted another quarter of disappointing financial and operational results, which culminated in an 8% drop in revenues and $107 million loss for the quarter. Those numbers both wildly missed forecasts.

An accounting of those operations fell on the head of EchoStar’s revolving cast of C-level staff as EchoStar’s outspoken co-founder and chairman Charlie Ergen was again absent from the company’s earnings call. Ergen was “excused” from the previous call due to the event falling on his birthday, but no mention was made of his absence from the most recent call.

However, those immediate results and executive moves are increasingly secondary to EchoStar’s dwindling bank account.

CTO Paul Orban explained that EchoStar was sitting on $766 million in cash at the end of the first quarter. This followed the company paying out $2.4 billion on a debt maturity that came due during the quarter.

The more pressing matter is a $2 billion debt maturity that is set to come due in November.

“We do not currently have the necessary cash on hand or projected future cash flows to fund fourth quarter operations or the November 2024 debt maturity,” Orban told investors during the earnings call.

EchoStar is scrambling to at least generate cash flow, including slashing costs across the organizations. This includes plans for capex for 2024 to be half of what it spent last year.

CEO Hamid Akhavan did note that EchoStar is working “on a number of avenues” toward attracting new financing.

“We have fielded a variety of offers and are pursuing those which can support our long-term objectives,” Akhavan said. “The complex and delicate nature of this process demands time and confidentiality. We will certainly have more to share in due course.”

Gimmie Credit financial analyst Dave Novosel told SDxCentral in an interview that those financial needs are now on the clock, with immediacy dependent on which side of the table you are sitting on.

“A lot of people would say, ‘well, there’s not much time as these bonds are due in November,’ where Ergen might say ‘look we’ve got seven months, we’ve got a lot of time,’ and both perspectives have some merit,” Novosel said. “But I think Ergen is the kind of a guy, given his background, he’s kind of a gambler, I think here he’s willing to wait it out. He doesn’t get nervous typically, and is not going to make a rash decision so they can wait it out.”

Published reports last month indicated that EchoStar was working to secure more than $1 billion in financing with collateral on that financing tied to Dish Network’s extensive spectrum portfolio. EchoStar is reportedly sitting on more than $20 billion in debt.

EchoStar’s ability to use spectrum as unsecured collateral is tied to a license transfer it pulled off earlier this year with Dish Network. That move had Dish Network transfer a portion of the $34 billion it has spent on spectrum licenses to a newly formed EchoStar Wireless Holdings entity, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar. The license transfer includes spectrum ranging from 1.9 GHz up to 47 GHz, with Dish Network retaining direct control over most of the spectrum it’s using to power its 5G network.

“We have a significant amount of spectrum … far more than the value of the obligations we have,” Akhavan said during the earnings call.

However, Novosel said use of those spectrum licenses to secure financing could be challenging. He explained that while spectrum “is valuable in the sense that like land they are not making more of it,” the value is tied to what someone is willing to pay for it.

“Anybody investing in these bonds would have to be prepared to take this spectrum as a guarantee of collateral,” Novosel said. “Certainly Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile would welcome more spectrum … but none of these three are desperate for spectrum. So there’s a question of how valuable the spectrum might be.”

Daryl Schoolar, analyst and director at Recon Analytics, told SDxCentral in an interview that operators basically never turn down the opportunity to acquire new spectrum as it’s the lifeblood for mobile services, which underscores the carrier’s financial position.

“I’ve never seen operators not need capacity, and that’s something of a mainstream band,” Schoolar said of the spectrum EchoStar turned down. “Even though it wasn’t massive, they could still aggregate it with other spectrum assets if they were thinking about growth.”

“Every time I do research and talk to carriers about what they want from 5G, what they want from 5G-Advanced, what are the benefits of 6G, it always comes back to capacity,” he added. “If you have a network and you’re growing on it, the traffic is growing on it, you’re going to need more capacity.”

Schoolar’s comments were further highlighted during the quarter when EchoStar also officially passed on the ability to purchase highly sought after low-band spectrum from T-Mobile US due to its financial constraints. That option was a requirement stemming from T-Mobile US gaining government approval to acquire Sprint in 2020.

The deal would have allowed EchoStar to acquire 14 megahertz of nationwide spectrum in the 800 MHz band for $3.6 billion. The original deadline for the deal was last fall, but EchoStar kicked that decision down the road by agreeing to give T-Mobile US a non-refundable $100 million deposit. That new deadline was April 1, and now T-Mobile US has the right to auction that spectrum to the highest bidder.

That availability, along with rumors of T-Mobile US and Verizon looking to acquire operating assets and spectrum from the country’s fourth-largest operator UScellular, could further depress EchoStar’s financial return on selling its spectrum holdings.

“Right now, my focus more than anything else is to address the two significant challenges ahead of us,” Akhavan said. “One is, as I mentioned, just immediate financing needs, and second is getting our business operationally to the point where, post-financing challenges overcome, having a business that is sustainable and is generating significant economic value, and those two priorities right now are taking I would say, 99% of my time.”