Thales Alenia Space (TAS), much rumoured to be considering merging itself with rivals Airbus Defence & Space, has very publicly stated that it can live quite happily without a merger. At a presentation on November 14th made by CEO Hervé Derrey he explained how he saw 2025 – and beyond – panning out.

He said that TAS was already restructuring itself and by 2028 it was targeting a pre-tax profit margin rising to 7 per cent (it was just 1 per cent in 2023) and helped by its new software-defined products coming to market, and growth out of its Italian clients. Derrey added that the company’s current problem child, its telecom division, would be helped because a handful of contracts – not valuable – would be wrapped up. The contract values were badly impacted by inflation amongst TAS suppliers following on from the Ukraine invasion.

However, demand for telecom-based Geo satellites has halved. “The Starlink situation has turned our geostationary satellite market from 20 satellites per year to about 10 satellites per year,” Derrey said.

Importantly, he stressed that an increase in scale would not be helped by a merger, noting: “The trajectory that we showed does not require additional scale. Scale can help. It allows you to share fixed costs. But it is not required for us to implement our plan.”

Its Telecom vertical generated €700m last year and is forecast to grow by 3 per cent average per annum between now and 2028.

Derrey said this forecast did not include revenue contributions from the European Commission’s IRIS2 secure communications mega-constellation, which he said could be worth several billion euros for TAS.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. AT&T explains AST SpaceMobile strategy
2. ESA introduces Fair Return structure
3. New EU space boss explains strategy
4. Eutelsat suffers from negative bank report
5. MultiChoice, eMedia make peace
6. Eutelsat criticised over “Kremlin links”
7. Rivada Space “still working” with Terran Orbital
8. D2D: Power levels concerns
9. Terran Orbital hit with Class Action

Categories: Blogs, Business, Inside Satellite, Satellite

Tags: Airbus, Space, Thales Alenia