Eutelsat has issued a trading review and market update stating that its OneWeb division was making slower progress than expected. The impact has slashed its anticipated EBITDA revenues for this year (to June 30th) by between €75 million to €145 million.

Eutelsat has “suspended” its guidance for this financial year and postponed any further guidance for the 2024-2025 period (its next trading year stating on July 1st this year) will not be given until August 2nd. Eutelsat is holding a conference early on January 29th to explain its predicament.

The satellite operator said that the legacy Eutelsat business remained on track with expected performance and confirms a return to top line growth for FY 2023-24, mainly driven by the entry into service of satellites Eutelsat 10B and Konnect VHTS.

It is three months since low Earth operator OneWeb was fully absorbed into the Eutelsat Group, and while OneWeb was “progressing well “ and now had a backlog of $1.1 billion at the end of the last quarter, nevertheless progress was running “behind schedule relative to the original roadmap”.

“This reflects delays in the availability of the ground network, as well as a revenue mix more oriented than expected towards the sale of user terminals, which impacts margins. The delay in the ground network impacts revenues, especially in mobility and in certain geographies where market access is still outstanding,” added Eutelsat.

“The deployment of the ground network is progressing well, towards a 90 per cent completion rate in Q2 2024. We continue to see strong momentum in the take-up of pre-signed commitments with major customers, and we believe we are on track towards our longer-term targets,” said the update.

The operator reported: