Etalon Group H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 5, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: LEO revenues jumped 84.1% to EUR 187m (now 15% of group), management expects ~50% LEO revenue growth in FY25‑26 and targets EUR 1.5–1.7bn revenue with ≥60% EBITDA margin by FY28‑29.
  • Positive Sentiment: A EUR 1.5bn capital increase — backed by core shareholders including the French and UK governments — is due by year‑end to lower pro‑forma leverage (~2.5x) and unlock debt/ECA financing for LEO CapEx and refinancing.
  • Positive Sentiment: Commercial traction with sovereign customers accelerated — a EUR 1bn 10‑year framework with France’s Ministry of Armed Forces, a UK FCO deal and renewals (e.g., MBS) helped government services grow 24% to EUR 211m.
  • Negative Sentiment: Reported group share net loss widened to EUR -1,081.9m driven by EUR ~777m other operating expenses (including a EUR 535m goodwill impairment and EUR 186m satellite impairments), higher D&A, and net debt of EUR 2.627bn (net debt/EBITDA 3.88x).
  • Neutral Sentiment: FY25‑26 gross CapEx is guided at ~EUR 1.0–1.1bn focused on LEO (orders for follow‑on satellites and Gen‑1 continuity) to reach full global coverage in 2026, implying heavy near‑term investment to scale services.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Etalon Group H2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Speaker 5

Hello and welcome to Eutelsat Group Full Year 2024-2025 Results. My name is Laura and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listener only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Jean-François Fallacher, CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Hello, good morning. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today for Eutelsat Group's Full Year 2024-2025 Results presentation. My name is Jean-François Fallacher. I'm the CEO of the company and I'm joined today by Christophe Caudrelier, who is our CFO, and Joanna Darlington, who is our Head of IR. Let's go directly to the presentation. On today's agenda, we will obviously run through the key events of this year, the operational performance, the financial performance, and of course, we will wrap up with the strategic and financial outlook. Starting with a reminder of the key highlights of last year, clearly last year has been a pivotal year for Eutelsat Group. First, I am pleased to report that we delivered a solid financial performance aligned with expectations. Total revenues have reached €1,244,000,000, which is up 1.6% like-for-like. The four operating verticals contributed to €1,226,000,000 in revenues, up 0.8% like-for-like.

Speaker 1

Most notably, our LEO, low Earth orbit segment, saw year-on-year revenue growth exceeding 80%, reflecting the increasing commercial traction across geographies and use cases. These LEO revenues now represent 15% of all group revenues. That is reflecting the substantial growing demand for LEO capacity and that across all verticals. Over the past year, we have provided satellite capacity to Ukraine. We have also signed key agreements with European institutions, including a massive framework agreement with the French Ministry of Armed Forces and a contract with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. These milestones are reflecting our growing role as a trusted partner in Europe's sovereign digital infrastructure. We announced a capital increase of €1.5 billion to support our long-term strategic roadmap.

Speaker 1

This initiative is backed by all core shareholders, including the French state and His Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom, and this is expected to be completed by the year-end. This financing will strengthen our capital structure, accelerate deleveraging, and unlock investment capacity to support both the continued expansion of our LEO network and our future role in the IRIS2 constellation. In parallel, we are pursuing a complementary debt refinancing plan to further enhance our financial flexibility. Now let's have a look at the operational performance. Please note that all the comments I will make on these numbers are relating to like-for-like variations. It emerged on a constant currency and perimeter basis. Our total revenues for Full Year 2024-25 stood at €1,244,000,000. This is up by 1.6%.

Speaker 1

If we look again at the operating vertical revenues, they are up by 0.8% and our LEO revenues amounted to €187,000,000, up by 84.1%, again showing the strong demand momentum. Our adjusted EBITDA stood at €676.2 million on June 30th, and it was stable while the adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 54.2%. Now, if we look at our CapEx, we had €450,000,000 CapEx last year, which is below the level of 2024 due to the phasing of the constellation, the LEO constellation renewal. Our net debt to EBITDA was 3.88 times. These financial results were in line with our projections of our operating vertical revenues around the same level and an adjusted EBITDA margin slightly below the level of the previous year. Let's have a look now at our different segments. Video is representing 50% of the revenues with €608,000,000, a decline of 6.5%.

Speaker 1

Fixed connectivity revenues are representing 20% of the group revenues and they grew by 4.3%. Government services represent 17% of our revenues and are growing by 24%. Mobile connectivity revenues are representing 13% of the total group revenues and they were stable year on year. Other revenues of €17.5 million are actually coming from recognition from IRIS2 revenues and edging, amongst other things. Let's now have a look at these segments a bit more in detail. Starting now with video. Revenues video were down year on year by 6.5%. This is clearly reflecting the maturity of this legacy business. Eutelsat's leading video hotspots nevertheless continue to attract broadcasters, notably HOTBIRD. HOTBIRD that is at 13 degrees east, which saw the renewal of the capacity agreements with longstanding customers, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, for instance.

Speaker 1

We had We.TV, which is the global HUD-supported streaming TV network that signed a new deal to add free-to-air streaming channels to the HOTBIRD satellites. The fourth quarter revenues on these segments stood at €147,000,000, down by 6.8% year on year, and they were broadly stable quarter on quarter. What I want to state here on the video segment is that as we announced recently, Eutelsat has removed several more Russian channels from Split to be compliant with the latest directives of our national regulator, ARCOM. The impact on revenues of the removal of this channel is estimated at €16,000,000 and a similar amount of EBITDA lost in 2025-26. Let's now go to the fixed connectivity vertical. Revenues there stood at €247 million. They were up by 4.3%. This is mainly thanks to the continued growth of LEO-enabled connectivity solutions.

Speaker 1

That is offset by more challenging conditions for the geo-enabled solutions, including, for instance, the contract on which we ceased revenue recognition with STEAM in Italy on Connect2HTS. The fourth quarter revenues stood at €69 million. They were down 14% year on year. This reflects again last year's comparison base because last year was boosted by a high level of terminal sales and recognition of catch-up revenues that explain this quarter, this year on year, a quarter decrease. Quarter on quarter revenues were up 21% and that again thanks to LEO revenues performance. Amongst recent commercial wins on the fixed connectivity on LEO, Eutelsat and Orange signed an agreement for LEO capacity that is going to enable Orange Group to strengthen its satellite solutions portfolio with LEO connectivity solutions for its enterprise and government customers. That will be for them a potential support on their mobile backhauling globally.

Speaker 1

Let's now go on the vertical segment on government services where revenues stood at €211 million. That segment grew by 24% year on year thanks to the growth of LEO-enabled solutions, notably with the services we delivered for Ukraine and as well the increased demand from other non-U.S. governments such as Taiwan, for instance. The fourth quarter revenues stood at €65 million, up by 41% year on year and 38% quarter on quarter. In June 2025, we inked a major €1 billion 10-year framework agreement with France's Ministry of Armed Forces in the context of the Nexus programme. This will reinforce the French military space communication model by combining military and civilian resources, these civilian resources being brought to the French armies by Eutelsat OneWeb. Elsewhere, we are also proud that we signed a contract recently with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Speaker 1

The OneWeb LEO constellation will provide high-speed, low-latency connectivity for British embassies, high commissions, consulates, and as well as broader UK government activities globally. We also signed an extension of the contract with MBS, our German distributor, which is a multi-year, multi-million euro agreement to provide Eutelsat OneWeb LEO connectivity to government and institutional customers across Europe. Let's now look at the mobile connectivity revenue segment, which stood at €160 million. Actually stable year on year. This reflected growing demand for LEO-based solutions, notably here in maritime, and that was actually offset by lower GEO revenues. On the commercial front, we signed last week a deal with India's station SATCOM to deliver LEO connectivity services to the global maritime sector, which is an important contract for us. What I want to state as well is that in this mobile segment, aero mobility is really gaining traction.

Speaker 1

We have now over 100 airplane installations which have been completed out of a backlog close to a thousand aircraft, and we have customers that are major airlines, including, for instance, Air Canada or Delta Airlines. Now let's have a look at our backlog. As you can read there, our backlog is strong and stood at €3.5 billion on June 30, 2025. This is an equivalent of 2.8 times our 2024-25 revenues, and connectivity is representing 57% of this backlog. Now I will hand over to Christophe, our CFO, that is going to comment for you on our financial performance. Christophe, please.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Jean-François. Good morning, everyone. Starting with profitability, reported EBITDA stood at €676.2 million at the end of June 2025, compared with €718.9 million a year earlier, down by 5.9%. This gap is explained by the missing OneWeb quarter in fiscal year 2024. On a like-for-like basis, the EBITDA was stable. The adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 54.2% at constant currency. It was 54.4% reported versus 55% a year earlier and 59.3% reported. OpEx were €73.4 million higher than last year, reflecting the consolidation of OneWeb over 12 months compared with only nine months in fiscal year 2023-2024. On a pro forma basis, costs were up 3.5%, reflecting the ramp-up of LEO activities to full operational run rate. This impact was mitigated by synergy benefits from the integration of OneWeb and strict cost control measures, among which IT costs and OneStream implementation.

Speaker 6

Group share of the net result was a loss of €1,081.9 million versus a loss of €309.9 million a year earlier. This reflected other operating expenses of €777 million compared to €208 million last year, including an impairment of €535 million in respect of geo goodwill in H1 and a further €186 million in geo satellite impairments. D&A of €808 million versus €702 million a year earlier, reflecting the perimeter effect of OneWeb, as well as higher in orbit amortization due to entry into service of Eutelsat 36D and 20 LEO satellites during the first half. These have been partly offset by a lower geo on-ground depreciation. A net financial loss of €201 million versus €124 million a year earlier, mainly reflecting the evolution of foreign exchange gains and losses and higher interest costs.

Speaker 6

A corporate tax inflow of €6.7 million versus an inflow of €28.3 million a year earlier, reflecting the non-recognition of deferred tax for French entities in 2024-2025. Finally, losses from associates of €2.4 million versus €22.8 million last year, reflecting the contribution of the stake in OneWeb in the first quarter of financial year 2023-2024, now fully consolidated. Let us move to CapEx. Gross CapEx amounted to €449.8 million, compared with €517.1 million a year earlier. This decrease reflects lower geo satellite program expenditure and lower LEO on-ground CapEx, as well as the phasing of CapEx related to the renewal of the LEO constellation.

Speaker 6

Capital expenditure is expected at a level of €1 billion to €1.1 billion in the fiscal year 2025-2026, reflecting the timing of key milestones, which are including the order of an initial batch of 100 additional satellites in December 2024, as well as the upcoming order of 340 further satellites for the LEO constellation. Going forward, CapEx will remain focused on LEO activities in line with the group's strategic vision, primarily on the Gen 1 follow-on programme. Geo CapEx on their side will ensure service continuity. At the end of June 2025, net debt stood at €2,626.6 million, up by €82.2 million versus the end of June 2024.

Speaker 6

It reflected CapEx-related movements and higher financial costs, partially offset by net cash flow generated by activities, as well as the reclassification under IFRS 5 of the liabilities of the assets held for sale in the context of the disposal of the passive ground infrastructure for more or less €100 million. This disposal remains on track for disclosure at the beginning of calendar year 2026. As a result, the net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio stood at 3.88 times compared to 3.79 times at the end of June 2024. The average cost of debt after hedging stood at 4.37%, down from 4.87% in fiscal year 2023-2024. This decrease reflects both the reduction in short-term interest rates on the group financing index and variable rates, as well as the maturity in January 2025 of the cross-currency swaps portfolio.

Speaker 6

The weighted average maturity of the group debt stood at 2.5 years compared to 3.5 years at the end of June 2024. Liquidity remains strong, with underwritten credit lines and cash around €1.07 billion. Now back to Jean-François to comment the outlook and next steps.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much, Christophe. A few reminders of the key elements of our market update that took place on June 19, 2025. As you can see there, the B2B satellite connectivity market is seeing strong momentum with projected growth of this total market around 12% per year through 2029. This is expected to more than double the size by 2033. Virtually all that growth in connectivity is being driven by LEO, which is massively outpacing the broader market growth. The LEO B2B satellite revenue growth is expected to be at a growth of 28% CAGR through 2029 and to multiply its current size fivefold over the next eight years. In summary, LEO is no longer an emerging technology. This is a proven and scalable solution that is really unlocking entirely new use cases.

Speaker 1

Thanks to its low latency, high throughput, and fast flexible deployment, it has a lot of potential. This is precisely the market on which we are positioned with our OneWeb network. Since Eutelsat has acquired OneWeb in 2023, we've made strong progress in addressing a number of operational challenges that were identified at that time. This is positioning us today to fully capitalize on this opportunity. I want to pinpoint a few key matters. The first one is that our satellite fleet is now fully in orbit with a further 20 satellites that have been added in 2024, which led to upgraded service quality. Today, we are operating a fleet of over 650 satellites that are offering more than 99% network availability. We have now 39 satellite ground portals, which are live across the globe.

Speaker 1

There are five more under deployment, and that will put us on track to offer full worldwide global coverage in 2026. From a regulatory standpoint, we have secured the commercial licenses in more than 180 countries for now. We offer a full suite of next-generation terminals with further innovation on the way, including a new man-packed model for military usage and dedicated IOUTs, antennas specialized for airplanes. All of this is putting Eutelsat in a fundamentally stronger position to scale in LEO. A zoom on the traction we are seeing on government services now. I remind that we are the only one of two LEO operators that is currently not a U.S. company. As mentioned here in this presentation that you see on the screens, the strategic importance of Eutelsat has been now showcased by a number of deals.

Speaker 1

The most important is clearly the landmark framework agreement we are having with France, the French Ministry of Armed Forces, alongside France's Nexus programme, which is a €1 billion framework contract. We also signed recently a LEO capacity deal with the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office to connect embassies and other sites abroad. Last but not least, we have renewed and enhanced a multi-year, multi-million euro extension of our LEO capacity contract with our German distributor, MBS, to address the needs of some European governments. Now let's go back to our capital increase. Since our last communication on June 19th, we are obviously delighted that His Majesty's Government of the UK has joined our capital increase. Alongside the other core shareholders, this is boosting the capital increase from €1.35 billion to €1.5 billion. You can see on this slide the details of the UK participation that are outlined.

Speaker 1

Clearly, this capital raise of €1.5 billion will support the execution of our strategic roadmap and reinforce our financial strategy. It will strengthen our balance sheet, reduce the pro forma leverage to around 2.5% at the end of the fiscal year 2026, and enhance our credit profile. That will unlock access to complementary funding sources such as debt market, ECA financing, and all of these will be critical to support our CapEx plan over 2026-2029, alongside, of course, the continued improvement of our LEO operating cash flows. Let's now turn to our financial objectives. Clearly, since stepping into the role, one of the findings that has stood out for me is the pace at which commercial momentum is building across multiple verticals and geographies. It's a strong signal that Eutelsat's proposition is resonating and that we are now meeting real and growing customer needs.

Speaker 1

In this context, I've set out a clear and focused action plan for the company. First, scale up your operations to achieve full global coverage with a total of 44 ground satellite portals, giving us a full Earth coverage. Second, on the go-to-market front, we are sharpening our focus on high-value use cases such as IRO, tactical mobilities, seeking to deploy more specialized and more cost-efficient user terminals, and obtaining remaining licenses to enable service activation in key countries. Third, on the operational side, we are ensuring continuity beyond Gen 1 with the upcoming deployment of 440 follow-on satellites while continuing to enhance performance across software, ground infrastructures, and UT globally to provide the best service with our Constellation. If we now go to the financial objectives for next year, in Full Year 2025-2026, we are expecting LEO revenues to demonstrate further strong growth, rising by 50% year on year.

Speaker 1

This dynamic growth will compensate, but not yet outweigh the decline in geo revenues, and the geo revenues will be impacted, unfortunately, by additional Russian sanctions in the video business. As a result, Eutelsat Group targets revenues in line with an adjusted EBITDA margin slightly below those of Full Year 2024-2025. On the CapEx front, as Christophe Caudrelier mentioned earlier, we are expecting to reach approximately €1 billion to €1.1 billion CapEx. Following the contemplated capital increases announced in June, and this capital increase is due to be completed by the end of the calendar year 2025, net debt to EBITDA estimated is at circa 2.5% by year-end 2025-2026, which is clearly reflecting a robust and self-funded financial structure.

Speaker 1

If we now look on the longer term, when we look further out and geo gathers momentum, Eutelsat Group is expecting growth and profitability to ramp up with revenues expected to range between €1.5 billion and €1.7 billion by the end of 2028-2029. That is clearly thanks to the strong momentum of LEO revenues, which are going to significantly outperform the market growth of B2B connectivity revenues. In terms of operating leverage, we expect to drive mid to high single-digit percentage point improvements in EBITDA margin, which will result in a margin of at least 60% by Full Year 2028-2029. In the longer term, post 2028-2029, the B2B connectivity market is expected to pursue its growth at a double-digit rate, mostly driven by the LEO market expansion. To sum up, Eutelsat Group is experiencing robust growth in LEO revenues on the back of strong demand.

Speaker 1

Eutelsat Group is uniquely positioned as a European space connectivity champion in shifting geopolitical environments. We are making strong progress in addressing the operational challenges, and we are on track for our full global services in 2026. Management is laser-focused on revenue growth drivers, aiming to deliver €1.5 billion to €1.7 billion revenues in Full Year 2028-2029, with an EBITDA margin of 60% or more. Financing is secured with strong backing from our core shareholders for an upcoming €1.5 billion capital increase, underpinning a fully comprehensive 2026-2029 financing strategy. On that note, I thank you very much for your attention. Christophe, Joanna, and myself are ready to take your questions.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a brief moment. Thank you. We'll now take our first question from Alexander Peterc of Bernstein. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Operator

Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. First of all, on your fourth quarter revenue, two things stand out. One is obviously the strong government, and the second one is what I believe is consultancy revenues from IRIS2. Correct me if I'm wrong in the line other. Could you help us understand, can you sustain this momentum in government and how we should model the other revenue line going forward? I have a quick follow-up on OneWeb. Thank you.

Speaker 1

You're right. The €17 million are mostly linked to IRIS2 linked revenues and a few other items, but mostly linked to IRIS2. The way you should model is clearly, you see the trends. The trends on the geo video revenues, which are legacy revenues, is we are expecting continuous declining trends of these mature legacy businesses. Same on the connectivity geo business and very, very strong growth on the LEO OneWeb business. That's obviously the way I'm sure you are already doing modeling and you should continue doing modeling in the future. I don't know if Christophe or Joanna want to add something.

Speaker 6

Yes, maybe a couple of points, Alexander. First, starting on the GOV and the strength of the GOV in Q4. Obviously, it's related to the increase in service revenues, but you should also take into consideration a strong momentum on the equipment sales during Q4, which explains some of the very strong growth for this particular quarter. You should figure that out in your projections. On IRIS2, it's really related to the revenue that we recognize for the work that is performed for IRIS2. This is mainly related to internal costs, man hours or hours that are invoiced. They should continue in the years to come, as long as the IRIS2 programme is in development. It's quite difficult to predict a precise figure.

Speaker 6

That's also the reason why they are located in other revenues and they are kind of one shot or depending on the specific requirements and on the specific frame of the projects. That's what I can say on IRIS2.

Operator

Okay, that's great. Thank you very much. A quick follow-up just on your revenue with OneWeb. First of all, do you plan to continue reporting this revenue line separately quarterly or on a full-year basis? The second kind of sub-question would be, how is the connectivity revenue distributed within OneWeb? What's driving the growth? Is it more government? Is it more fixed data or mobility? Thank you.

Speaker 6

First of all, I can confirm that we will continue to report the split between LEO and geo revenues. That's for sure. What I can say is it's quite spread over the different verticals. The growth in OneWeb is strong and this is true for the verticals we are reporting. I mean, there's no major significant variance within the total revenues and between the different verticals. What I can say is it's more or less in line with our historical split of revenues within connectivity. No major change.

Operator

That's great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 5

Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Stephane Beyazian of ODDO. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Yes, thank you very much. I've got two, if that's possible. The first one is, can you tell us a little more on what are your expectations specifically for the contract with the French Ministry of Armed Forces and also with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office? You know, when do you expect revenues to start kicking in and what sort of size could we be thinking of? My second question is regarding the OneWeb revenues. Is it possible to have a bit more detail? I guess some of the revenues reported for OneWeb also include some revenues from Eutelsat Group. I was just wondering whether we can have the, let's say, net revenues or external revenues. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4

Sorry, Stéphane, thank you for the question. On the OneWeb revenues, they are purely external. There are no internal Eutelsat revenues. What we are communicating here, the $183 million is revenues of sales to third parties. There is no, let's say, internal hocus pocus in these revenues publications. It's just external. On the first question, we are working with the French army currently to make these revenues start kicking in as soon as the end of this calendar year 2025, in the middle of our fiscal year 2026, basically. That's what the plan is. After that, you have seen the size of the contract. It's a $1 billion framework contract over 10 years. It gives you an idea of the expected, I would say, run rate for yearly once we will have ramped up the contract.

Speaker 4

Roughly around $100 million per year revenues expected on three main topics without going into the details of this contract. The first topic is capacity. The French army is planning to buy from us just raw capacity. The second one is potential payloads on upcoming satellite launch, which would be specific to military usage. The third one is hardening, in a way, helping us to harden the constellation with some stronger encryption, for instance, or other specific matters that would be purposeful for military usage.

Speaker 6

If I just may add one point on your first question, Stéphane, what we report is not the OneWeb revenue. We report LEO revenues, right? This is the combination of all LEO revenues. Obviously, LEO revenues are based on the constellation owned by OneWeb. What you have is you may have some revenues within Eutelsat assets that are LEO related. What we are reporting, again, as Jean-François mentioned, is 100% external revenues.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Thank you very much. Just to follow up, if that's possible, you also mentioned, I think, some revenues from Ukraine. Do you see more potential there? Thank you.

Speaker 4

Yes, we do. This is the aim of the extension we just signed with one of our distributors. We see the services and the number of, let's say, the usage, they are growing, basically. That is month after month.

Speaker 1

Very good. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thank you. We will now take our next question from Brittney Metzer of Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Operator

Yes, thank you. Good morning, team. Quickly, on the debt refinancing plan, I think you mentioned early on in the call that there can be a potential debt refinancing exercise. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on that plan? Thank you.

Speaker 6

Yes, sure. Thanks for the question. What I want to first start with and stress is that obviously, the global financing plan for the group is obviously starting with the equity raise and the increase in share capital. This is the very big, important point. This is a start point. This allows us to have a much better balance sheet, first. Second, it's, as you have probably seen, highly positive on the rating side. Our profile, our rating profile is improving significantly thanks to this increase in share capital. On this basis, yes, obviously, this allows us to address the financial markets. It's part of our plan for the year to come. This will be addressed through mainly two things. First of all, is financing through export trading agency support. That's the first leg. The second leg is obviously to refinance our current bonds.

Speaker 6

As you know, we have a maturity, a first maturity for year 2027, calendar year 2027. We will be addressing this in this coming year. It's a bit early for us to give you a precise timetable or when we will go to the market. Obviously, all the teams are focused on this, and it's the current work that we are doing.

Operator

Thank you. That's helpful.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now move on to our next question from Ben Rickett of New Street Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning, guys. Thanks for the questions, and thanks also for the new LEO revenue disclosure. It looks like the LEO revenue is really strong in Q4. I wondered if you could talk a bit about what has driven that strength in Q4, to what extent it's worn off, and how we should expect that to phase going into 2026. The second question, you've again given the backlog numbers. I wondered if you could say what the LEO backlog was at the end of Q4, and maybe also to what extent that backlog is being sort of impacted by currency, by the dollar weakness. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Okay, so let me maybe start with your second question, Ben. If I understood well, your question was related to the LEO backlog, right? How is it linked to the currency, to U.S. dollar? First of all, let me answer on the U.S. dollar a bit more broadly. The percentage of our sales, and I would say it would apply to the backlog too, based on U.S. dollar, is a bit more than half, 50% of our business. What I can say is that more or less, if you have one set of variance in the dollar to the euro or the euro to the dollar, that has an impact of roughly €6 million in annual sales, just to give you the data. Obviously, this is not the impact on the EBITDA level, right? It's much lower. The impact would be one third.

Speaker 6

Obviously, the variation between the euro and the dollar to the euro has some impacts on the backlog and considers again 50% of this. On the LEO backlog, we are close to in the same range as we disclosed priorly, that is to say around €1 billion. Just a precision on this one. As you know, in the connectivity business, the length of the contracts is not the same as the one in the video business, as we were using to see. We had much longer terms in video than we have for connectivity. This is true for both LEO and geo business. We are more used to much shorter contracts that are reflected into the backlog, closer to less than two or three years compared to an average of around five years in the video business. This is the help I've answered to your second question.

Speaker 4

Christophe, if I may add on the LEO backlog, what is to be remembered, we are expecting strong growth on the LEO revenues. As a reminder, we are expecting more than 50% growth on the LEO revenues year on year. We see a strong appetite on LEO again.

Speaker 6

The first question related to strong Q4 revenues. When we look at Q4 2024-2025 compared to the same Q4 last year, we have an increase and then focus on connectivity revenues of roughly 2% if we look on a like-for-like basis. Clearly, you're at about the same level as last year, I mean, in terms of variance. What I can say is that you need to take into consideration that usually Q4s are impacted by true-up in the LEO business. Yes, you may have a bit stronger Q4 than the other quarters. This is mostly linked to this true-up recognition. What I can say also is that for the last quarter of fiscal year 2025, we had a significant sale of equipment for the new business, which was actually the case also in fiscal year 2024.

Speaker 6

This is also a good sign because we are increasing the number of equipment and users' terminals in the ground, which is also very positive for the ongoing service revenues.

Speaker 4

Thank you. That's really helpful. I think in Q4 2024, those equipment sales were about €30 million. Is it roughly the same in Q4 this year?

Speaker 6

Yes, it's not so. It's about the same level. Let me check. We are in the same range.

Speaker 4

Perfect. Thank you.

Speaker 6

A bit stronger actually, yeah, but in the same range.

Speaker 5

Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Wolfgang Felix of Sarria. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Yes, hi. I apologize if you've already covered this. I dialed in a little bit late. You have disclosed LEO revenues of €187 million. When I subtract group from communications, I come to a difference of €115 million. In my sort of simplistic world, that should be OneWeb. Are there LEO-related revenues that you're charging at group level as opposed to OneWeb? How come there's such a difference? It's some €70 million difference.

Speaker 3

Sorry, are you talking about Eutelsat SA and Eutelsat Group?

Speaker 2

Yes, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3

No, it doesn't work like that. We can take it offline and I can explain to you. As Christophe said earlier, and Jean-François, there are no internal, there are no intra-group revenues. Everything that we disclose for LEO is external sales.

Speaker 2

Exactly. I recall you saying that. Could you possibly contact me afterwards?

Speaker 3

Yes, I will.

Speaker 2

That'd be fantastic. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thank you. We'll now take our next question, a follow-up from Alexander Peterc of Bernstein. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Operator

Yes, thank you. Thank you very much for taking this quick follow-up. It's just on modeling. Should we model the Russia rolloff in the first quarter as being one quarter of the full-year impact that you specified, which I think is €16 million? Is it working in a linear manner over the year? That comes on top of a normal decline of around 5%, or is it now more like 6.5% declines in video? That's the first one. The second one is when you talk about margins being slightly down in fiscal 2026, that is before the impact of the ground infrastructure sale and leaseback. Is that correct? If you just remind us of the maths there. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Yeah, so definitely the questions, Alexander, for the Russian business is as from July 1. It's a completely linear impact. For the second question, yes, the guidance that we give there, it's before the impact of Stargate. The reason being that we can't precisely plan for the exact date when Stargate is going to be effective. I confirm that on a yearly basis, the impact on the EBITDA, the impact of Stargate on the EBITDA, is roughly €70 million per year. This is, again, on an annual basis.

Operator

That's great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 5

Thank you. If there are no further questions in queue, I'll now hand it back to Jean-François for closing remarks.

Speaker 4

Thank you very much for being present at the beginning of August for our call. Again, to sum up these year results, strong and robust growth in LEO revenues. We are now uniquely positioned with OneWeb being the only European space connectivity champion in this complex geopolitical environment that you all know. With now this upcoming €1.5 billion capital increase, we are fully financed for generating this growth story in our future. Thank you very much. Have a good summer. For those of you who have the chance, enjoy the summer break and see you very soon in the back to school. Goodbye.

Speaker 5

Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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