Eutelsat: “All objectives attained”
August 9, 2024
By Chris Forrester
Eutelsat’s full-year revenues (to June 30th) were positive. Overall revenues were up 7.2 per cent to €1.21 billion (€1.13 billion in the previous year).
Eva Berneke, CEO, explained that Eutelsat was in the middle of a profound transformation, commenting: “The advent and rapid adoption of LEO technology presents significant opportunities in both the commercial and government markets, as well as challenges, notably in the form of powerful new entrants into the satcom space.”
She added: “Eutelsat Group delivered on its FY 2023-24 objectives, thanks to a robust performance from incremental GEO capacity, and the contribution of our LEO business. This has been an important year in the history of Eutelsat with the closing of its combination with OneWeb to form Eutelsat Group, the world’s first LEO-GEO satellite operator, representing a major step-up in our telecom pivot. While the operational roll-out of the OneWeb service has been more challenging than anticipated, we are now on track in terms of target coverage, and we expect to see continued growth from OneWeb in FY 2024-25.”
Eutelsat’s traditional video division (54 per cent of revenues) again suffered negative performance, with a y-o-y decline of 7.7 per cent to €650.6 million (down from €704.8 million) but all the other key divisions were in positive territory, and some significantly so. For example, Mobile Connectivity (13 per cent of revenues) was up 44.7 per cent to €159.3 million) while Fixed Connectivity (19 per cent of revenues) rose 31.7 per cent to €234.1 million). Government Services (14 per cent of revenues) rose 15.3 per cent to €165.3 million.
Q4 revenues stood at €340 million up 11.9 per cent like-for-like. Revenues of the four key Operating Verticals stood at €338 million, up 12.8 per cent year-on-year and by 12.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter on a like-for-like basis.
FY 2023-24 Video revenues were down by 6.8 per cent to €651 million, reflecting the secular market decline in this application. In the First Half, this trend was accentuated by the effect of sanctions against Russian and Iranian channels as well as of the early non-renewal of a capacity contract with Digitürk from mid-November 2022. Q4 revenues stood at €159 million down by 6.2 per cent year-on-year and broadly stable q-o-q.
The backlog stood at €3.9 billion as at June 30th versus €3.4 billion a year earlier. The contribution of OneWeb more than offset the natural erosion of the backlog, especially in the Video segment, in the absence of major renewals. The backlog was equivalent to 3.5 times 2022-23 revenues, and Connectivity represented 56 per cent of the total, up from 40 per cent a year earlier.
“We expect combined FY 2025 Revenues of the four operating verticals to be around the same level as FY 2024 at
constant currency and perimeter,” said the company.
Berneke explained that there were still OneWeb ground gateways to be completed and these would not be in place much before springtime 2025 and the OneWeb LEO benefit and connectivity opportunities would be available. She added that the partnership already in place with Intelsat would likely see other similar relationships added.