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Ses Sa Glbl Fid Dep Shs
3/31/2021
Hello and welcome to the SES First Quarter 2021 results. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. These can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. I will now hand over to your host, Richard Whitening, Head of Investor Relations SES, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Good morning everyone. Thanks for joining our investor and analyst results call for the first quarter ended 31st of March 2021. This morning's presentation was uploaded along with the press release and the subsequent release regarding the share buyback to the investor section of the FCS.com website this morning if you don't already have it. As always from me, please note the disclaimer at the back. In a moment, Steve Collar, CEO, will present the main business highlights, followed by Sandeep Jalan, CFO, to cover the financials in more detail. After some closing remarks from Steve, we'll be happy to take your questions, where we're also joined from the US by JP Hemingway, CEO of SES Networks. So on that note, I'll hand over to Steve.
Thank you very much, Richard. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us this morning. I'm going to start on page three and a good start to the year with revenue and EBITDA fully in line and with the business on track to deliver on our financial outlook. In video, the value of our core neighborhoods, our market leadership in delivering premium content and strong execution on renewal is translating into improved top line performance. In networks, we've maintained revenue year on year, notable in view of the extended COVID environment. We've delivered a solid step up in our government business with an expanded set of services delivered on our unique MEO fleet. More broadly in networks, we're seeing good traction in the market and a step up in deal flow and pipeline. We continue to be laser focused on cost, cash generation, and running the business in the most efficient way. The positive impacts of Simplify and Amplify, our internal transformation program that we successfully implemented last year, is showing strongly with recurring OpEx down 7% year-on-year and is also reflected in the higher EBITDA margin versus this time last year. Leverage is also lower with half a billion of year-on-year net debt reduction on the back of strong cash generation and continued financial discipline. Very positive progress with our CBAN clearing. As you know, we will earn $1 billion through $1 billion US dollars through successful clearing of Phase 1 by the end of this year. and we're ahead of schedule with customer migrations. We're also fully on track with phase two with satellites well into their manufacturing cycle. And finally on this page, today we're announcing a share buyback program to purchase up to 100 million euros of our shares over the next few months. Our share price does not at all reflect the underlying value of the business. We've invested substantially in our next generation constellation that will launch later this year. driving top-line growth, EBITDA growth, and expanding cash flow in the coming years, augmented by substantial CBAN proceeds. This buyback program represents an attractive opportunity to deploy capital for the optimal benefit of our shareholders, and it underscores both our commitment to delivering shareholder value and our confidence in the long-term fundamentals of the business. So, turning to the key financial highlights on page four, revenue of €436 million, and in particular, adjusted EBITDA of €268 million was solidly in line with our expectations, and we are on track with the financial outlook that we presented to the market in February. €263 million delivered in Q1 in video reflects an improving trajectory, down 4.6% year-on-year versus 8% for the full year 2020, while €173 million in networks represents solid performance, in an extended COVID environment, flat year on year, and with increasing deal flow and traction as we progress through the year. I'm pleased that the structural changes that we implemented last year to reduce our footprint and our overall cost base are reflected in lower OPEX year on year and improved EBIT margin of 61.4%. This laser focus on running our business in the most efficient way while supporting the growth opportunities that we see in networks and cloud will continue. Net profit is also up 41.5% year on year. So now to speak to each of our segments in turn, starting with video on page five. And as I mentioned, a strong start to the year in video. We serve 361 million TV households, a reach that underpins the extraordinary value that we deliver to our customers across our industry-leading neighborhoods. This reach allows us to defend our value strongly in renewal discussions with our most important customers. To that end, we've concluded over 150 million euros worth of deals in the quarter, including a major multi-transponder long-term renewal with Sky. We've continued to deliver on our recent successes with the public broadcasters in extending and augmenting our services with BMT, an important public broadcaster in the rich German ecosystem that we support at our most valuable orbital location of 19.2 East. An increasingly important part of that ecosystem in which we support 18 million TV homes, almost 50% of all homes in Germany, is our unique B2C position with HD+. And I'm pleased with the progress that we're making here. The number of paying subs is growing again after a couple of years of stagnation. We've implemented a modest price increase given the expanded functionality and brand new look and feel that we've introduced. And excitingly, we'll be launching an IP version of HD Plus in the coming months, substantially expanding our addressable market and building a capability that we expect to be able to leverage elsewhere in our business. Our good start to the year and strong progress on renewals means that we've already secured 90% of our video revenue outlook. And if we assume a nominal run rate for HD Plus, that number becomes more like 95%. Shifting to networks now on page six, we've maintained revenue in line with pre-COVID levels despite the adverse impacts of the pandemic in some of the market segments that we serve and notably in some of the market segments such as aviation and cruise that provided substantial growth up to that point. Given that these segments were our fastest growing prior to the global pandemic and have faced near-term headwinds as the segments recover, and as some of our service provider customers undergo restructuring. The growth fundamentals for networks remain strong, and this is reflected well in our government business, which posted growth of 8.5% year on year on the back of additional U.S. government services on O3B, with notable wins with the U.S. Navy and other DOD departments. We announced an important contract award yesterday, a $35 million U.S. dollar deal with a major U.S. DOD combatant command for a new geo-based reachback solution connecting forward stations units in remote locations back into secure sites within Europe. Also this quarter, Lux GovSat, our affiliate operating the GovSat-1 satellite, closed an important contract for services under the umbrella of the European Defense Agency program managed by Luxembourg Defense to support the GovSatCOM requirements of the Belgian MOD. This is an important win and the first in what we hope of many projects and programs to be secured under the broad European Defense Agency program. Two further wins with European governments in GEO and MEO, the expansion of our business through our strategic partner, Marlink in Africa, and a successful demonstration of our high-throughput, low-latency MEO mobile capabilities with major European Navy program points to strong progress and good traction in global governments. FIXdata continues to perform well, and we're successfully building strategic partnerships with Tier 1 mobile operators and local providers serving rural inclusion programs. There's building interest in O2BM Power among our key Tier 1 operators, leveraging its unique capabilities to augment their fiber networks and leverage the ability to pool and share resources across a wide area, something that's unique to O3B Empower. As I mentioned, and in spite of the headwinds in our mobility sector, our fundamentals are strong given our differentiated fleet and our ability to offer multi-orbit performance and resilience. In cruise, for example, we've secured in excess of 220 million euros of commitments from four of the largest cruise brands, four of the five largest cruise brands, and to expand onto O3B Empower and our geo-hybrid solutions. We're getting closer to the launch of SES17 and O3B Empower, both programs on track to launch this year, SES17 having recently passed its important thermal vacuum testing with flying colors. We've signed almost 200 million US dollars in backlog for the program since the start of the year, will be the first to market with our second generation network, and we see good traction in the market over the course of 2021. O3B Empower is about more than just satellites, and we announced this week another key milestone with our O3B Empower strategic gateways. These investments will enhance our ability to serve customer needs and segments with high throughput per user requirements in the most flexible and scalable way, in turn driving acceleration of top line growth in networks from 2022. A number of these O3D Empower gateways will be co-located with Microsoft and our partnership with Microsoft along with our overall cloud strategy continues to gain momentum with increased revenues from delivering Azure Orbital solutions and building a strong pipeline with joint go-to-market cloud and connectivity services. And then lastly from me, a brief update on C-band on page seven. As you all know, executing on the accelerated clearing of C-band spectrum while protecting our customers and their neighborhoods create substantial value for our business and our shareholders. We have a large and dedicated team devoted to this effort, and I'm pleased to confirm that customer transitions are proceeding ahead of schedule. Starting next month, we will be into the broad deployment of filters that will protect our customers' cable feeds while clearing the low 120 megahertz for mobile carriers. Everything remains fully on track and even a little ahead for our first clearing milestone on December the 5th, 2021, which will trigger the initial $1 billion of accelerated relocation payments. Preparations for the second clearing milestone at the end of 2023 and another $3 billion of payments is also on track with the new satellites under construction for launch in the second half of next year. And as we've discussed previously, we continue to pursue further CBAN monetization both within and outside the U.S. So with that, I will hand over to Sandeep.
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