Intelsat down 9% in Q2
July 27, 2016
By Chris Forrester
Intelsat’s revenue picture continues to suffer, with a 9 per cent decline in its Q2 revenues of $473 million (€430m) and Adjusted EBITDA income of $411 million.
CEO Stephen Spengler, in a statement, said “Although headwinds continue to exist in our business our launch programme and strategy execution are in line with the Guidance we issued on February 22, 2016 and confirmed today. These headwinds include pricing pressure, reflecting oversupply conditions of wide-beam capacity for certain regions and applications, point-to-point telecommunications infrastructure services reaching end of lifecycle and limited new US government opportunities, compounded with continued currency challenges in certain countries. These trends will pressure our revenue performance until new marketable inventory from our four planned 2016 satellite launches enters service and begins to generate incremental revenue in the second half of the year.”
The new inventory he mentions is close to becoming available with two satellites now awaiting launch from French Guiana later in August.
Spengler says that as of Q2 its ‘Government Business’ is stable, and this is good news in that the division has been under pressure for some time.
Overall, forward bookings are also holding up with its June 30th backlog measured at $9.2 billion (compared to $9.3 billion at the end of March 2016).
Eutelsat and SES will unveil their latest numbers on July 29th.