5/10/2020

speaker
Operator

Hello and welcome to the SES first quarter 2020 results conference call. Please note that for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions later on the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star 0 and you'll be connected to an operator. I want to hand over to your host, Richard Whitening. Vice President and Head of Investor Relations to begin today's conference. Thank you.

speaker
Richard Whitening
Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our first quarter results call. This morning's presentation was uploaded to the website along with the press release this morning if you don't already have it. As always, please note the disclaimer at the back of the document. The agenda for today is outlined on page two. In a moment, Steve Collar, CEO, will present the main business highlights, and Ferdinand Kaiser and JP Hemingway, the CEOs of SEF Video and SEF Networks, will cover the main developments in their respective businesses. Afterwards, Sandeep Jalan, our new CFO, will then cover the financial highlights in a bit more detail. And after some closing remarks from Steve, we'll be happy to take your questions. And so with that, let me hand you over to Steve.

speaker
Steve Collar
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Richard, and morning, everyone. I hope you and all your families are well and coping with the various challenges and changes introduced by this COVID-19 environment. Before talking about the business, I want to take the moment to introduce Sandeep to you all, albeit virtually. Sandeep is officially on day two here at SES and joins us from Aparam, and he brings with him the experience of not just surviving but thriving in a highly competitive and disruptive industry. Apparam is a business that stands out amongst its peers, and from the moment that I met Sandeep, I knew he'd be a great fit for us here at FES. I'm enormously excited to be working with him and really looking forward to you all getting to know him. And so with that, I'm going to jump straight into the key highlights on page four. We've had a good start to 2020 with numbers solidly in line. This is the ninth quarter of results either in line or ahead of market expectations, and that underscores our focus on execution. Our network's business continues to develop well, with underlying growth stepping up from the 4.5% we posted in 2019 to nearly 8% in Q1, with another quarter of significant growth in mobility and a positive contribution from fixed data. To date, our results have been largely unaffected by the global pandemic, and we've got a resilient business that benefits from fixed long-term contracts. More than 85% of our revenue for 2020 is already secured. That said, given the impact that the pandemic is having on global economies and some of the verticals that we serve, it's inevitable that our revenues will be affected. It's too early, not only in the development of the pandemic, but also in projections of the pace and scale of the recovery to quantify the revenue impact. But in anticipation, we've proactively implemented aggressive measures to ensure that we mitigate, wherever possible, the impact on our bottom line. By taking these actions and committing to them early, we put ourselves in the best position not only to deliver the right performance in 2020, but also to ensure that we emerge from this crisis with the company in the very best possible position. Looking beyond the immediate and inevitable priorities of COVID-19, we're making good progress with Simplify and Amplify. This program will deliver significant profitability improvements from 2021 onwards, while also providing greater visibility for investors into our video and networks businesses respectively, and enhancing our strategic flexibility. With the publishing of the SEC report in order, we've now got full visibility of the incentive structure for acceleration payments, and we're now laser-focused on execution and have established a dedicated team to deliver on this important program. So, with that, I'll give a little bit more detail, turning to page 5. Revenue of €480 million was flat year-on-year on a reported basis and 1.9% lower on a constant FX. EBITDA of $288 million, excluding the restructuring charges, reflected a margin of 60.1% and all fully in line with our expectations. Net worth now represents more than 40% of our business and grew by 7.7% on an underlying basis. Video performance was also consistent with our expectations, with the lower year-on-year revenue reflecting the trends that we spoke about in February, specifically our customers right-sizing their platforms in developed markets resulting in lower volumes, lower revenue from North America wholesale, and our conscious decision to exit lower margin and unprofitable service activities. We continue to be disciplined around our operating expenses, and year-on-year our recurring expense is reduced. Net debt to EBITDA at 3.32 times was lower than the 3.4 times at the same time last year, and with a 50% lower dividend versus last year to be paid in Q2, we remain consistent with and committed to investment greatest. Overall then, a solid quarter and one that in normal circumstances we'd be discussing the growth and development expected through the year on the back of a good start, particularly in networks. Of course, none of us are operating under normal circumstances at the moment and we collectively face the challenges of the global pandemic for more than two months now. And so turning to page six, our first and ongoing priority is to protect our business, our customers, and our 2100 employees around the world. We implemented a global work from home policy well ahead of any government regulations. We substantially upscaled our IT resources, protected operations as a pristine environment that only operators can access, and as a result we've had 100% availability of all of our customer facing and operational services since the start of this pandemic, something that we've received really good feedback from our customers on. We obviously have well-established contingency plans in place to address scenarios such as this across all of our technical and operational facilities, but it's enormously gratifying to see that these plans are truly tested, we come through with flying colours. It doesn't happen without incredible dedication and professionalism, and I'm extremely proud of the world-class team that we have at SES who have stepped up as one since the start. So our next priority is liquidity and we're in a strong position financially with all debt maturities in 2020 behind us, a healthy cash balance and no further financing required until 2021. We have access to a 1.2 billion credit facility that remains and is expected to remain fully undrawn. Turning then to our customer segments, we have a strong and resilient business, as I've said, with good visibility of both revenue and cash. More than 85% of our expected revenue is secured for 2020 and a secured backlog of over €6 billion. Nevertheless, our business is certainly not immune to the effects of the pandemic, given the impact on global economy and on some of the segments that we serve. We do expect that our revenues will be impacted, particularly in our aeronautical segment, cruise, sports and events, that together make up 12% of our revenue. We're working closely with our customers in these segments, as you'd expect, and looking to find the right balance between supporting our customers through these unprecedented times, while at the same time serving the needs and objectives of our own businesses. We're not updating our outlook for the year, given the early stage in the development of the pandemic and uncertainty as to the scale and pace of the recovery, but what we have done is gone hard and early to mitigate the impacts of these likely revenue developments at the EBITDA line. We've implemented a range of measures across our cost base, including a number of exceptional actions aimed collectively at delivering mid-double-digit reductions in costs and therefore protecting in every way possible our 2020 EBITDA. We've also removed 180 million of capital expenditure from the long-term plan, including more than 20 million from 2020. And lastly, we're in a unique position, both as an industry and as SES, to have a positive impact on our customers, on their customers, and on society more broadly in challenging times. It's something that we're passionate about, and at a time where connectivity and being connected has never been more important, we're stepping up to support NGOs on the front line of the pandemic with in-kind contributions, in-kind connectivity services, and broadcast programs organized by non-profit organizations to support impacted communities. And we're also a global business with offices and people around the world, and the local impact that we're able to make through our Giving Back program is equally important. We've seen incredible examples of SES employees helping vulnerable folk in our local communities, volunteering in health centers, in food distribution, and manufacturing protective gear, and numerous other selfless acts. The sharing of these stories internally really continues to build an incredibly strong sense of community. So looking beyond COVID-19 and turning to page seven, Simplify and Amplify, our strategic transformation program that we discussed in February is now well underway. We're on track with a broad base of initiatives that will generate meaningful profitability improvements with EBITDA optimization of between 40 and 50 million in 2021 and beyond. We're investing in customer-led innovation and deepening our engagement in cloud. And last but not least, we're continuing our work to separate our video and networks businesses within SES to provide greater visibility into our business, increase operational focus, and create strategic flexibility going forward. In keeping with this operational focus, we've established a dedicated team reporting directly to me to execute on the UFC van clearing and turning to that in more detail on page eight. The report and order is now published and we have full visibility over the clearing process, the timelines and the opportunity for SES to earn almost 4 billion in accelerated clearing payments. It's a complex endeavour and the dedicated team is fully engaged with customers, vendors and suppliers to execute on the clearing and the stated deadlines of December 2021 and December 2023. We have a detailed plan in place, no showstoppers, and we're finalizing our plans to invest in clearing ahead of the reimbursements that are expected to start in 2021. The next step is the election to accept acceleration on the 29th of May, and we're gearing ourselves up for full execution and implementation beyond that date. So I'll come back and wrap up at the end, but with that, I'll hand over to Ferdinand, who's going to talk a bit more about the video developments.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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