SES ups dividend reward for shareholders
February 29, 2024
By Chris Forrester
SES is having a strong trading year. Its revenue for 2023 was €2.03 billion, and ahead of expectations despite its Video division suffering a -4.4 per cent fall in revenue to €607 million. But its Networks division is still showing solid growth – up 6.1 per cent to €1.06 billion).
But the headline news is that it is to change its dividend policy to half-yearly payouts, and to pay shareholders an extra 25 Euro-cents this coming October, and starting next year a payment “of at least” 25 cents in both April and October 2025. Its normal dividend of 50 cents per share will be paid in April 2024.
SES also reported that it is making an insurance claim of $472 million because of problems with some of its mPOWER fleet on Medium Earth orbiting satellites.
Contract backlog on December 31st 2023 was €4.3 billion (€5.2 billion gross backlog including backlog with contractual break clauses). This included over $850 million of fully protected contract backlog ($1 billion gross backlog) for SES-17 and O3b mPOWER combined.
For Full Year 2024, group revenue and Adjusted EBITDA (assuming an FX rate of €1=$1.09, nominal satellite health, and nominal launch schedule) are expected to be in the range of €1.94 billion – €2 billion and €950-1,000 million respectively, with growth in Networks revenue expected to mostly offset lower year-on-year Video revenue.
Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES, commented: “It’s an exciting time to be joining SES and an honour to lead this established, world-class operator on the next phase of the journey. The 2023 results demonstrate the strong fundamentals of our business and attraction of our multi-orbit offering to a customer base of world-leading organisations, governments, and institutions. We delivered on all the financial objectives for 2023 including exceeding revenue expectations, secured €1.5 billion of new business and renewals across Networks and Video, and launched the first six O3b mPOWER satellites which will bring high-performance connectivity services to committed and prospective customers from early Q2 2024.”
“With the hard work of C-band clearing in the US behind us and cash proceeds received, we have strengthened our industry-leading investment grade balance sheet and unlocked important financial flexibility which creates the opportunity to expand our capabilities, enhance commercial offering, drive free cash flow, and deliver returns to our shareholders. While the competitive landscape in which we operate is evolving rapidly, SES is well positioned to succeed and grow as we continue to deliver differentiated and compelling solutions to our customers, underpinned by next-level execution and rigorous financial discipline,” he added.