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Ses Sa Glbl Fid Dep Shs
11/7/2021
Hello and welcome to the SES year-to-date results call, nine months ended 30th of September 2021. My name is Courtney and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note that this call 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. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. And if you require assistance at any time, please press star 0 and you will be connected to an operator. And I will now hand you over to your host, Richard Whiting, Head of Investor Relations, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining this investor call. This morning's presentation was uploaded along with the press release to the investor 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, and as usual, 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, I'll hand over to Steve.
Thanks, Richard. Morning, everyone. I'm going to start on page three, and our strong year-to-date performance has continued into the third quarter. We've upgraded our top-line outlook for the full year for our video business on the back of continued strong performance with important long-term renewals signed for our core neighbourhoods, expanding our market leadership in high definition and good progress in HD+. In networks, we've maintained revenue year-on-year in the face of the extended COVID environment and we're seeing encouraging signals that the market is picking up with sequential growth in mobility and fixed data in Q3 to complement the strong year-on-year performance in governments. It's certainly true that the COVID recovery has been longer and slower than we might have expected and with the additional short-term headwind from the rapid withdrawal of services from Afghanistan, we've tempered our expectations for the full year for networks with three months to go. The value of a balanced portfolio between video and networks is highlighted in that we remain on course to deliver total revenue within our Outlook range for the year, while Laser focused on managing our discretionary spend, including a 2% year-on-year reduction in recurring operating expenses, means that we're also on track to deliver our adjusted EBITDA Outlook that we narrowed towards the top end of the range back in August. We've achieved a major milestone in securing future revenues in EBITDA. With the successful launch of SES17, it feels very good to be back launching again. And this is the first step in realizing our vision of a seamless, integrated, and cloud-enabled network of the future. And with the greater visibility on the upcoming launches for our unique O2B Empower system, we remain on track for start of service of O2B Empower by the end of 2022. Finally, I'm delighted to report that we've completed Phase 1 CBAN clearing in the U.S. Obviously, that's a big deal, and we expect to receive the first billion of accelerated relocation payments in the coming months. We're also on schedule, in fact, a little ahead of schedule to complete Phase 2 clearing before December 23, and that will trigger a further $3 billion in accelerated relocation payments. Okay, so turning to the key financial highlights on page 4. Revenue of $1.32 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $823 million were solidly in line with our expectations. It's pleasing to see that the strong focus on execution and the measures that we implemented during Simplify and Amplify have driven recurring OPEX down 2% year-on-year, with a corresponding robust EBITDA margin of 62%. It's also of note that we've done an excellent job in reducing financing costs, and that's helped to drive a 17% year-on-year improvement in adjusted net profit. So, looking at the segments now in more detail on page 5, and our video business continues to perform really well, you can see the improved revenue trajectory with revenues down 4.1% year-on-year versus 8% last year. We've increased our guidance for 2021 on the back of the stronger revenue, solid renewals with large and strategic customers such as Comcast and Sky and robust pricing across all markets and neighborhoods. We've built and continue to develop the industry's largest neighborhoods and a very strong indication of progress and the attractiveness of broadcast TV over satellite is the continued growth of high definition. We now carry an industry-leading 3,150 HD channels, and that's up 8% year-on-year. And the deal signed with Globcast for CGTN this quarter is a great example of a customer who's been leveraging our neighborhoods at 19.2 for many years and deciding to upgrade to high definition. 225 other channels have made that same decision over the course of a year. Very good news also announced this morning is the substantial extension of our business with Dish Mexico on the Ketsap satellites. a deal that secures over 85 million in backlog at a neighborhood that serves 2 million subscribers. Importantly, we now deliver a comprehensive set of services supporting Dish Mexico's business, with not only the satellite-delivered DTH, but also a state-of-the-art online video platform delivering OTT and on-demand content. And this is a really good example of the hybrid delivery platforms that the majority of our customers now employ. Our consumer business in Germany and Austria, HD Plus, continues to grow, posting strong numbers, in particular in the positive development of registered subscribers, while the price increase implemented earlier in the year is contributing to higher year-on-year revenue. We've put a lot of focus this year in developing the platform and expanding the services that we offer. And in the quarter, we launched HD Plus to Go, allowing HD Plus customers to take their HD content with them on their mobile devices for a small incremental fee. It's early days and the initial feedback from the public is great and obviously an important step forward in terms of us driving higher ARPU and reinforcing the attractiveness of the platform in our largest market. We'll follow HD Plus to go early next year with an IP version of HD Plus and that will allow us to address the non-satellite homes in Germany and that will increase our addressable market substantially in Germany. so page six moving to networks and again it's an important quarter of progress and development in our networks business we have been in this covert environment for more than 20 months now longer than any of us expected and that certainly has presented an extended drag on growth particularly in our higher growth segments of cruise and aviation given that backlog i think we can be really pleased with the resilience shown by the business during this period with overall revenues flat year on year. And the good news is that we certainly start to see recovery in the third quarter with a 5% increase on a sequential big basis driven in large part by a nice expansion in mobility. Government has been our standout performer in 2021 at nearly 8% year on year on the back of strong demand from the US and other governments, anchored particularly with our unique O3D infrastructure. We have adjusted our expectations for networks in 21, driven in part by the rapid withdrawal of the U.S. and other governments from Afghanistan, a relatively short-term impact, but nevertheless one that's difficult to compensate for fully in the year. On the fixed data side, we saw a modest contraction in the first nine months, driven by the 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, as well as strong performance from cloud in Q3. As I mentioned, notwithstanding COVID headwinds, our mobility sector is picking up with a return to sailing for the cruise sector and new contact winds in aero driving a 12% quarter on quarter growth. and demonstrating the strong long-term fundamentals, especially when looking ahead to bringing SES17 and O3BM power into service next year. Additionally, we grew our backlog on our Scala mobility platform by nearly 20 million through a growing list of mobility partners. Also of note on this slide, the success of our recent demonstrations with isotropic. Our strategy is centered around open architecture and a seamless multi-orbit capability. And for the first time, we're able to demonstrate with isotropic the simultaneous connection of a geostationary satellite and our O3B constellation into a single antenna at the same time. This is game-changing in terms of seamless customer experience, but it's even more critical for governments who are looking for flexible and resilient services. With the enormously exciting launch of SCS17 only a couple of weeks ago and O3B Empower early next year, we're building a global platform and a global capability that I believe can't be replicated. An important element in the global platform is cloud. And for the first time, we announced that our strategic partnership with Microsoft has been extended, with Microsoft committing to becoming a customer on O3B Empower, leveraging our next generation network to extend Azure at the edge of their network. And so moving to page seven and the important progress that we're making on our strategic initiatives, huge progress this quarter with the completion of phase one clearing in the US, earning us a billion in accelerated relocation payments and the launch of SES 17. SES-17 is really a state-of-the-art satellite with more than 200 high-throughput beams over the Americas and huge flexibility to enable TALIS in-flight experience, among others, to serve the growing need for connectivity and the shifting demand patterns across the U.S. over the course of a day. This flexibility comes from not only the fully digital payload on SES17, but also the deployment of our adaptive resource control technology, ARC, that allows us to move power and bandwidth across the platform intelligently, adapting to the demand that the system sees. 2022 is going to be an exciting year of launches with the first O3B Empower launch in Q1, quickly followed by the second. And while the first launch will come a little later than originally planned, we have a more powerful booster for the second launch, allowing us to maintain our objectives of being in service with O3B Empower in Q4 next year. And as a result, we'll have our second generation multi-orbit architecture in full commercial service before others are in service at all. and we fully intend to leverage that time to market advantage. Customer engagement for SES17 and O3B Empower is strong and building. We signed more than 220 million in backlog for the combination of SES17 and O3B Empower since the start of the year, with total backlog now more than $780 million for the combination and a strong pipeline that will only strengthen as we launch and deploy the systems. And then finally back to CBAN and the successful completion of Phase 1, nicely ahead of the December deadline. It's worth noting that the incredible effort and engagement across the CBAN cable neighborhoods in the U.S. as we protect the services of more than 100 million households while delivering spectrum to support 5G rollout. It's a huge undertaking and is going incredibly well. We expect to receive the first billion in accelerated payments early in 2022. and hopefully by the time we speak to you with the full year results. So everything continues to be very strong also with respect to Phase 2 clearing, with satellites well under construction and on track for launches next year. It's hard to overstate the significance in terms of value creation with a further $3 billion earned on successful Phase 2 clearing. We also continue to pursue further opportunities for accelerated clearing and monetization now that results show of the auction in the U.S. are fully known. So with that, I'll hand over to Sandeep.
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