Karim Michel Sabbagh, President and CEO, commented: “SES has continued to be productive in the third quarter 2015. SES has been first out of the starting gate in the commercial introduction of Ultra HD, building on the milestone of Europe’s first commercial UHD channel, pearl.tv – and adding further agreements in Europe and North America with Sky Deutschland, NASA TV, Fashion One, High 4K and TERN.
SES has exciting opportunities ahead and is well placed to deliver sustained medium to long-term growth. Our relentless execution of a differentiated strategy allows us to capitalise on the strong demand drivers across the four market verticals now defining SES’s business.
SES-9 and SES-10 will add significant growth capacity to serve the strong demand for Video in International markets, and we are globalising SES’s services capabilities in tandem with infrastructure to provide a value-added global satellite-enabled solution.
SES-12, SES-14 and SES-15 will optimally serve multiple Next Generation Data and Mobility requirements by combining wide-area beams with a global high throughput satellite platform. The improved price points of HTS are stimulating new applications and growth opportunities for SES, with anchor customers already secured.
The SES-16/GovSat programme is SES’s first satellite dedicated to Government customers and will further expand our global government customer base, while the long-term outlook for SES Government Solutions remains robust.
These investments are also perfectly complemented by O3b’s ‘fibre in the sky’ satellite offering, which has now successfully completed its first year of operations. As the business continues to develop, SES will increasingly benefit from a unique ability to offer a differentiated and complementary GEO/MEO solution.”
Financial Guidance
The financial guidance published with the H1 2015 results (on 24 July 2015) is re-iterated. SES’s financial guidance assumes nominal satellite health and launch schedule. Full Year 2015 revenue is expected to be around 3% lower for revenue and EBITDA around 3.5% lower than the prior year on a constant FX basis, while growing on a reported basis. SES’s expectations for EBITDA margin are unchanged at above 82% for the infrastructure business and between 14% and 18% for the services businesses. SES will provide an update on its future guidance with the FY 2015 results, by which time SES-9 is expected to have been launched.
source : SES S.A. YTD and Q3 Results, Luxembourg, 30 October 2015
