Advanced Television

Robust results from SES

February 24, 2017

By Chris Forrester

SES turned in a solid set of results for its Q4 and full year, and in an extremely positive move saw its all-important backlog of contract expand from €7.4 billion in 2015 to €8.1 billion last year.

Reported revenue of €2.068 billion (up 2.7 per cent) and contributing to a net profit of €962.7 million. Its HD channel count grew 7.2 per cent to 2495 channels (up 100), and SES is now carrying 21 commercial Ultra-HD channels.  Video revenues were 68 per cent of the overall revenue and showed a 4.7 per cent growth to €1.398 billion.

SES’s UHD distribution platform serving cable operators and multi-channel television platforms throughout North America is now home to nine linear UHD channels. During 2016, Travelxp 4K, 4KUNIVERSE, Nature Relaxation 4K, INsight TV and C4K360 joined SES’s UHD neighbourhood in North America (hosted on SES-1, SES-3 and AMC-18), which reaches over 100 million households.

“2016 was a year of acceleration for SES. We continued to execute our strategy of building differentiated capabilities in the four market verticals. This contributed to delivering 2.7 per cent growth in reported revenue and SES’s highest ever contract backlog,” said CEO Karim Michel Sabbagh.

Reported revenue benefited from the contribution of RR Media, which was consolidated on 6 July 2016 and merged with SES Platform Services to create MX1. MX1 is handling the distribution of over 2,750 global TV channels (including over 500 channels for which MX1 delivers fully managed playout services) and more than 120 VoD platforms.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Business, DTH/Satellite, Production, Results, Services, UHD, Ultra-HD/4K