ABS stable FY; CEO stepping down
January 12, 2024
By Chris Forrester
Dubai-based (but Bermuda registered) ABS has revealed its full year results (to September 30th 2023). The operator says that its financial turnaround is underway under its new ownership. However, a recently hired CEO is stepping down “with immediate effect”.
ABS was previously owned by private equity firm Permira. It now has a strategic alliance with Canada’s Network Innovations. ABS operates a fleet of satellites; ABS-2, ABS-2A, ABS-3A, ABS-4/Mobisat-1 and ABS-6. The satellite fleet covers over 93 per cent of the world’s population across the Americas, Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, CIS and Russia.
CEO Amit Somani was hired from YahSat in September 2022 and is stepping down “for personal reasons”. ABS has commenced a search for a replacement.
Financial Highlights:
• Stable revenues of $68.9 million in the year
• Adjusted EBITDA of $39.1 million at 57 percent margin
• Strong free cashflow of $19 million
• Net debt of $26.1 million, following $15 million debt paydown since August 2022
• Shareholder dividends of $26.7 million paid and declared
Parm Sandhu, Chairman, said: “We have had a good start to our turnaround in this first year under new ownership. Our management team have improved our commercialisation by re-organising our sales function and through technical initiatives aimed at increasing our available capacity. With the creation of a global accounts group our business is positioning to benefit from an increasingly complex geo-political landscape and an anticipated shortfall in replacement GEO capacity. Our brand has been refreshed to Agility Beyond Space to emphasise our responsiveness to our global customers’ needs with a comprehensive service offering across space and ground segments in a rapidly evolving market for satellite services.”
“ABS holds an impressive portfolio of spectrum rights covering EMEA and APAC, and our team are in active partner discussions to unlock the hidden value in our holdings, including 75⁰East and 116.1⁰East, both of which offer valuable military Ka-band spectrum. Notably, we retained our priority rights at 116.1⁰East, where ABS-7 was previously operational, by bringing into use our filings during the period,” added Sandhu. “We have a strong balance sheet, which allows us to invest for growth, and are delighted to be able to return excess capital to our stakeholders. In total, across debt paydown and dividends we will shortly have returned $41.7 million since August 2022.”