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And welcome to the SES 2021 Half Year Results Conference Call for Investors and Analysts. My name is Jess and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, there will be the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question at any time. If at any point you require assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host Richard Whiting to begin today's call. Thank you.

Good morning everyone and thanks for joining our investor and analyst results call for the half year ended 30 June 2021. This morning's presentation was uploaded along with the press release to the investors section at ses.com if you don't already have it. As always, please note the disclaimer at the back of the presentation. 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 with that, let me hand over to Steve.

Very good. Thanks, Richard. And good morning, everyone. And thanks for joining us. So I'm going to be starting with page three and our good start to 2021 has continued into the second quarter. We've delivered a solid first half in video on the back of important long-term renewals across our core neighborhoods, expanding our market leadership in high definition and good progress in consumer, all of which has contributed to an improved top line trajectory. In networks, we've maintained revenue year on year in the face of the extended COVID environment We do see good signals that the market is picking up, and government has been particularly strong through this period, growing double digit. We continue to execute strongly in the business with a 5% year-on-year reduction in recurring operating expenses, a significant reduction in interest costs, and a reduction in net debt by almost $400 million. And our progress through the first half means that we're on track to deliver our 2021 revenue. We've got more than 90% of our revenue outlook already signed. while laser focus on reducing costs means that we're raising the low end of our adjusted EBITDA outlooks. So then with respect to C-band, we remain fully on track to achieve the phase one clearing deadline at the end of this year and triggering the first $1 billion in accelerated relocation payments. The recent issuing of C-band licenses and the support of the major licensees to the efficient reimbursement process means that we expect to start receiving cost reimbursement in the coming months. And then last but not least, we've returned 275 million euros of cash to shareholders this year through a combination of dividend and share buyback. And this underscores our commitment to delivering sustained shareholder returns. So turning to the key financial highlights on page four, revenue of 875 million euros and adjusted EBITDA of 544 million euros were solidly in line with our expectations. 526 million in video revenue delivered reflects the improved trajectory down 3.9% year-on-year through the first half versus 8% previously, and consistent with our conviction of flattening the curve over the medium term. 349 million euros year-to-date in networks is flat year-on-year, which we're pleased with given the ongoing COVID headwinds. Cruise lines are returning to business, aviation is picking up, driven by the US, and we've seen increased deal flow in the last few weeks across the board. Pleasingly, the strong focus on execution and the measures implemented during our transformational Simplify and Amplify program have driven recurring OPEX down 5% year-on-year, with a corresponding increase in EBITDA margin to 62%. Given our solid adjusted EBITDA through the first half, we're increasing the low end of our 2021 EBITDA outlook by 20 million, with the range now 1.08 billion to 1.1 billion. Turning to page five, and on the video side, we've concluded over 250 million euros of renewals and new business in the first half of 2021, building on the 650 million of backlogs signed during 2020. In Europe, we saw Sky and a number of major public broadcasters extend their business with us, particularly at 19.2 and 28.2 East, the jewels in our network and among the most valuable video neighborhoods globally. Pricing trends are flat to increasing, reflecting the value that we deliver to our customers' businesses. Importantly, we also extended our relationship with Comcast, who serve millions of cable homes in the U.S., while also facilitating the accelerated clearing of spectrum to support the SEC process, through the implementation of more efficient transmission. We talked previously about our leadership in both the total number of channels carried across the SES neighborhoods and the number of HD channels carried. And pleasingly, this leadership widened through the addition of 225 channels in high definition, up 8% year on year, to more than 3,100 in total. Satellite remains the most efficient, reliable, and cost-effective platform for broadcasters to distribute their most valuable content to consumers around the world. Good momentum and a positive trend in HD Plus in Germany, but I'll skip over that for a second to the recent launch of HD Plus in Ghana and an exciting world first as SES and HD Plus Ghana was the first business to transmit ultra high definition in Africa, transmitting both semifinals and the finals of the European Championships for HD Plus subscribers in collaboration with Samsung. Exciting developments regardless of whether you were on the right or the wrong side of the result. And sticking with the theme of sports, our sports and events business is back to pre-COVID run rates and picking up nicely. So then turning to page six, an HD Plus provides us with direct access to consumers in Germany and is an increasingly important contributor to our most valuable neighborhood. The business is growing again with important growth in the number of registered subscribers. while a price increase implemented earlier this year is contributing to higher year-on-year revenue. As trailed last time we spoke, we'll be expanding our HD Plus portfolio over the next few months, starting with the launch of HD Plus To Go. For just an additional five euros per month, HD Plus subscribers will be able to take their HD Plus subscription mobile with access to over 100 channels on their mobile devices using the HD Plus To Go app. The app will launch in Q4. I've already got the pre-launch version on my phone. It's pretty cool. And for those interested and want to improve your German, we've included the link to the commercial in the deck. And this will be followed early next year with an IP version of HD+, and that will be accessible to the 19 million non-satellite households in Germany, substantially increasing our addressable B2C markets. So, so much for video. We're now shifting to networks on page seven, and it's worth noting that we've been in a COVID environment now for almost 18 months, a period that's had a profound impact on cruise and aviation, and these segments for the three years prior to COVID were our fastest growing. In that context, we're pleased with the year-on-year revenue holding firm, and the standout performers, definitely the strong growth in our government business, up 11% year-on-year on the back of strong demand from the US and other governments, for the multi-orbit solutions that we offer, anchored particularly with our unique O3B infrastructure. I would note that I'm really excited by the engagement that we're seeing from governments around the world in MEO and in advance of the launch of O3B Empower later this year. On the fixed data side, we saw a modest contraction in the first six months driven by expected lower volumes in the Pacific following the deployment of a number of cable systems, but we continue to see growth from rural inclusion projects and continued success of broadening our relationships with tier one operators, and we see that evidenced here with our relationship with Orange and the maritime service partners that we announced yesterday. We're also excited to add AWS to our one hop to the cloud connectivity services, delivering a multi-cloud environment for our customers. Notwithstanding COVID headwinds, our mobility sector is picking up with a return to sailing for the cruise sector. We deliver the best solutions for crews in the industry, and with O3B Empower still a year away from commercial launch, we've already secured over $300 million in backlog from crews alone. We're making good progress in replicating the success in crews across into the government sector with Navy, and have a number of demonstration services ongoing across multiple naval fleets that we expect to transition onto O3B Empower. And that's a nice segue to page 8 and our view of how we see the market in networks dividing and where we believe we have a sustaining right to win with our unique multi-orbit cloud-enabled architecture. So this graph shows on the x-axis increasing throughput per site and on the y-axis increasing flexibility, whether the demand is essentially fixed geographically or varies over time or location. And so if we sort of start bottom left, services such as consumer broadband and traditional VSAT need relatively small amounts of bandwidth into relatively fixed sites. This is a large market. It's actually the largest on this graph, and that's where you'll find consumer broadband and providers such as Viasat and H&S, but also where we see the LEO's focus, such as Starlink, as their architectures lend themselves towards low throughput and low mobility. We focused our efforts around high throughput and high flexibility. This is where you'll find segments such as cruise, but also important government requirements such as ISR and Navy. And we're particularly strong here. We're close enough to the earth to solve for latency, but far enough away to allow us to deploy power and bandwidth flexibly to address the changing nature of demand in cruise, aviation, and government, as well as the higher throughputs for cell backhaul, trunking, and fiber restoration. We overlay this. with a coherent geo fleet and create seamless interoperability between them. And this will be made super powerful with the addition of O3BM power, 5,000 beams per satellite and terabit per second throughput. With O3BM power, we're launching our second generation network before others have deployed their first. And our network is designed to address the more profitable network segments with a sustaining value proposition. And to underpin this, we've signed $210 million in backlog for SES-17 and O3BM power since the start of the year, and total backlog now stands at $770 million for the combination, approximately a year ahead of commercial service. And finally, for me on C-band, and the summary is that we're fully on track. Everything remains green with respect to Phase 1 clearing. We've completed the satellite transitions, and we're substantially through the filter installations. Phase 2 also remains fully on track with satellites well under construction, and with the issuing of CBAN licenses, we expect the reimbursement expenses to start flowing in the coming months. So we continue to make excellent progress with a project that will obviously deliver substantial value for SES shareholders. And with that, I'll hand over to Sandeep.