The past week has not been helpful for satellite operator Intelsat. During the week ending October 16th Intelsat’s share price tumbled 14.82 percent (and 30.12 per cent over the past 4 weeks).  Not helping matters is that Monday saw its CFO depart unexpectedly, and without a replacement named.

Just over a week from now (on October 29th) Intelsat will unveil its Q3 numbers, and the market is expecting the operator to report a resurgence of its Government and Military revenues, which is good news. But on the negative side the market is forecasting Media revenues to be further under pressure.

The bottom line, according to equity analysts at investment bank Jefferies, is likely to see ‘growth’ of minus 4.9 per cent for the quarter-year, and thus year-to-date negative growth of -4 per cent.

The bank reminds investors in a note on October 19th of the “debate [which] has raged” over the sale of some “strategic assets” in an attempt to pay down some of its $14.8 billion debt burden.

“The CFO took the opportunity [at] a 29 September Deutsche Bank hosted event to stunt rumours, while also suggesting that the inter-dependent nature of its satellite network makes a carve-out of capacity difficult, if not nonsensical. The 3Q15 results will see attempts to further tease out some commentary on the matter, but we would expect to see further stonewalling,” adds the bank’s note.

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