If the general comment that a ‘rising tide raises all boats’ is accepted then the opposite is also true, and on July 24th the tide absolutely went out for the world’s three major satellite stocks.

SES had a terrible day, with its share price tumbling 8.16 per cent (€2.54) to €28.60, not helped by poor trading results and a profit warning as to the rest of this trading year. Also not helping is a high degree of uncertainty over the launch of SES-9 later this year. SES added that even when SES-9 was eventually launched by SpaceX it would be many months before the spacecraft started earning revenues. SES-9 is an electric craft which will take 4-6 months to get to orbit.

But the bad news seemed to infect Eutelsat which also suffered through no fault of its own. While Eutelsat’s share price wasn’t as severe as that of SES, at one point Eutelsat fell from €29.19 to €28.21 although it recovered somewhat to €28.71 but still very well down on the past 30 days best point of €31.30 back on June 24th.

Then Intelsat, already suffering a significant loss of investor confidence, caught the European contagion, and fell 2.17 per cent in the first hour or so of trading to a new ‘all time low’ of $7.60 although it recovered in later trading to close the week at $7.91.

But the day went badly for other satellite stocks. London’s Inmarsat fell back 3.69 per cent, Globalstar 4.33 per cent down and Iridium fell 2.47 per cent while London-based Avanti tumbled 5.91 per cent.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Virgin Galactic in stock split
2. Thuraya-3 suffers major problem
3. AST SpaceMobile hit by Class Action
4. Optimism under threat at SES
5. Rivada visits Terran Orbital’s manufacturing HQ
6. Avanti wins spectrum debt obligation case
7. SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers
8. IRIS2 already in trouble?
9. Intelsat contemplates next steps

Categories: Blogs, DTH/Satellite, Inside Satellite