Rodolphe Belmer, CEO of Eutelsat clarified in his statement that while the business saw mild improvements in five of its operating verticals, its “other revenues” were still “running behind expectations”.
“In the third quarter, the overall revenue trend of our five operating verticals improved further at -1.1% after -1.8% at the half-year stage. Video continued to progress, notably with improving trends at our HOTBIRD video position, while in Government Services the outcome of the latest US Department of Defense renewals was positive once again, at above 95%. On the other hand, ‘Other Revenues’ are running behind expectations following the outturn of the Third Quarter,” commented Belmer.
“We are working on a handful of active “Other Revenues” opportunities in the pipeline which would enable us to land at the low end of our Full Year total revenues objective of -1 to -2%. However, in the event that none of these “Other Revenues” materialise in the fourth quarter, the decline in revenues could be up to c. -3.5%. This has no impact on our other objectives for the current and following two years, which are fully confirmed.
“The year to date has seen significant headway on our strategic roadmap. In particular, the procurement of KONNECT VHTS, represents a major milestone in our growth strategy in connectivity and comes with major multi-year distribution commitments with Orange and Thales. Elsewhere, the disposal of our stake in Hispasat will contribute to accelerating our deleveraging in line with our commitment to financial optimisation.”
Since the start of 2018, Eutelsat has made further headway on its strategic roadmap with the procurement of KONNECT VHTS, a major milestone in the Group’s growth strategy in Connectivity with significant multi-year distribution commitments with Orange and Thales and representing the optimum solution from a commercial, technical, financial and operational perspective. The closing of the sale of the Hispasat stake for €302m was an important step in the rationalisation of the Group’s portfolio. It’s MoU with China Unicom to address the satellite communications market in the framework of the “Belt and Road” initiative, followed up by the commercialisation of the remaining HTS capacity on EUTELSAT 172B to UnicomAirNet, represented a backlog of over $100 million.
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