Advanced Television

HellasSat will be sold

March 21, 2012

By Chris Forrester

The Greek/Cyprus-owned HellasSat will be sold within the next six months, confirmed OTE (Greece’s publicly-owned telco). OTE’s chief executive Michael Tsamaz, in a local interview, said selling HellasSat was a priority and analysts suggest the sale would benefit OTE by between €100 million-€150 million.

HellasSat operates from 39 degrees East, with its HellasSat-2 craft which launched in May 2003.

While the satellite operators main asset is the satellite itself, the orbital slot would hold considerable attractions for any number of rival satellite operators. Eutelsat, for example, has made no secret that it would like to add HellasSat to its portfolio. But the same argument could be made for any number of other operators.

OTE itself is struggling under a heavy debt load (€763 million in bank loans fall due this year, with another €894 million in bank loans and a further €1.24 billion of bonds due for repayment in 2013).

Categories: Articles, Business, DTH/Satellite, M&A