As reported on June 1st SES is restructuring its European locations and staff, retraining some, redeploying some and making others redundant. SES is looking to trim €40-€50 million annually from its costs by 2021 and to “simplify operations and maximise efficiency”.

SES plans to close its offices in Brussels, central London, the Isle of Man, Warsaw and Zurich, redistributing activities in these locations to other offices in Kiev, Stockholm, Stockley Park in London and The Hague as well as its headquarters in Luxembourg.

“The full statement was issued on the SES web-site on May 29th, and seemingly timed to take advantage of the Pentecost bank holiday weekend over much of Europe.”

One source to Inside Satellite said: “Nice to bury the announcement over a holiday weekend”.

The consolidation plan will be extended beyond Europe to other regions and markets but the current Covid-19 impact has slowed the overall strategy, but an SES source says that it is still hoped that everyone affected will be informed by the end of June or shortly thereafter.

An SES spokesperson said that 10-15 per cent of staff would be impacted, although stressed that not all employees would be affected by redundancy. “We also mean people who will be retrained and reassigned to growth areas, working from home, have taken up voluntary phased retirement package and [some] unfortunately leaving the company.”

Some locations will be completely closed, such as the SES teleport in the Isle of Man and its technology and support moved to Betzdorf. SES was a partner with the Isle of Man government in the scheme and supporting some local initiatives. Some of these will continue, others not. The teleport opened for business in 2018 although SES has had a presence on the island since 2004 looking after SES Satellite Leasing Ltd.

One of those growth areas is its UK Stockley Park facility in West of London, where extra space has been leased for a special group looking to increase its ‘sports and events’ business.

Investors liked the news with SES’s share price hitting €7.56 at one point and ending the day at €7.29 (up 7 per cent). However, in October last year, shares were trading at €18.11.

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, Business, DTH/Satellite, Inside Satellite

Tags: SES