Advanced Television

SES looking to buy Asia rivals

November 22, 2013

By Chris Forrester

SES’ CEO Romain Bausch presented the SES satellite story at the Barcelona TMT conference organised by Morgan Stanley, and explained that SES had a solid outlook as far as its video business was concerned (70-75 per cent of sales), and also elaborated on how he saw the balance of its revenues shaping up.  But the key news was “SES’ clear message that it was looking to acquire companies in Asia,” stated Morgan Stanley’s media team, in a note to clients.

“Bausch explained that SES’ Video business was protected from the looming rise in competition from High Throughput Satellites (HTS) thanks to a better suited Video technology. He highlighted the contract recently signed with Brazilian DTH operator Oi, which is taking up most of the capacity on SES-6, and stated he had been positively surprised that SES had been able to commercialise most of the SES-5 transponders to Pay-TV companies in Africa. The ramp up will be gradual on SES-5, but Video take-up has been good. SES continues to believe that DTH is complementary to OTT / IPTV and that it will not be replaced.  He conceded that improving compression technology would mitigate the underlying growth potential of the global Video business; however, he believes Ultra-HD will be an interesting new growth driver from 2016-17.”

SES owns almost half of the new O3b satellite constellation which will start earning revenues by the middle of next year, and is widely expected to take full control of the business in due course.

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