EuroBusinessMedia (EBM): Eutelsat, the leading European operator for fixed satellite services, reports its full-year results for its fiscal 2010-2011 year. Michel de Rosen, welcome, you are the CEO of Eutelsat. You have once again published a good set of results, could you give us the highlights?
Michel de Rosen: It’s a brilliant year and we are quite proud of what we are delivering. Revenues up by 11.5%, EBITDA is up by 11.9%, net profit is up by 25.6%. This is the second year in a row that we deliver double digit growth of revenues and of EBITDA. So, an excellent year. In fact, a record year. Net profit is 29% of revenues. Based on this excellent performance and on the backlog which has grown further to close to €5 billion, which is 4.3 times our revenues, the Board has decided yesterday to recommend to the shareholders a growth of our dividends of 18.4% to 90 cents versus 76 cents last year. This is an expression not only of our desire to treat our shareholders well, but of the confidence we have in our future. It is important to know that the company did very well, but each of the three businesses we are involved in did very well. The Video business, which is the largest of our businesses, grew very well. This is fuelled by a growth of number of channels and at the same time a growth of high definition versus standard definition. Our second business, which is Broadband and Data, also grew well based on demand growing and our capacity also having grown. The business that grew the most is our smallest business, called Multi-usage. It has grown very well based on a very strong demand and prices increasing more than we expected. Overall, a brilliant year!
EBM: Could you provide us with an update on KA-SAT which recently became operational?
Michel de Rosen: KA-SAT is the most powerful satellite in the world. It was launched on December 26; it became operational on May 31st of this year, so seven weeks ago. So this is still a very young animal – a super animal, but young. Things are going very well. Technically, the satellite works well and the service we deliver to customers is exactly the level of quality that we expected and that they expected. We have already signed agreements with 13 distributors, including important companies like TeliaSonera. We should expect that we sign more in the weeks and months to come. We have confirmed today that our target is that KA-SAT will contribute more than €100 million to the revenues of Eutelsat by 2014. So I expect a ramp-up between now and 2014 and then further growth after 2014. All in all, KA-SAT is on track. It’s doing well and it will become a significant contributor to the growth of our company.
EBM: You’ve announced an increase in capital expenditure for the coming years. Would you care to comment?
Michel de Rosen: The reason that we have decided to increase our capex projection for the future is very simple. Our company has been able for now a number of years, since we became public, to deliver growth and profitability. And, by combining the two, we have been able to create good value for our shareholders. That remains our goal – create value for our shareholders. Therefore, we are not choosing growth versus profitability, nor profitability versus growth, they go together. To grow in our company, you need growth of demand; you also need growth of capacity. We used to have a guidance of €450 million for capex. That was approximately 43%, 44%, 45% of our past revenues. We are growing, therefore we need more capex, both to renew the fleet and to generate more growth. So we have announced that our new guidance now for capex for the coming three years is €550 million, which happens to be 44% of the revenues that we target for this year. So we are, if you compare capex to revenues, at the same level. Having said this, we don’t want to grow for just a few years, we want to grow for many, many years. So some investments are underway and they will generate growth in the short-term future. But the future project that we will announce in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, they will fuel growth for after 2014, because when we meet again in 2018 or 2020, I want to be able to report to you that we continue to grow vigorously, profitably, more than the market, and more than our competitors. That’s the whole idea.
EBM: Speaking of investments, you have announced the commissioning of a new satellite, Eutelsat 3B. Could you tell us more about this satellite?
Michel de Rosen: This 3B satellite is about growth. With this satellite we will be opening a new orbital position at 3° East. It’s a new position for Eutelsat. It will enable Eutelsat to generate more growth when the satellite becomes available. It’s important to know that the satellite will be focused on fast-growing markets, especially Africa, partly also Latin America and partly Middle East and Central Asia. It’s also important to know that this satellite is a kind of new generation satellite, more flexible. It’s a C-band, Ku-band, Ka-band. We shall have a lot of flexibility to be able to adjust to the evolution of the markets in different geographies. So it’s a great opportunity, a very exciting project.
EBM: And finally, what is your outlook for the next couple of years?
Michel de Rosen: We will continue to be present in markets, applications and geographies, where there is growth of demand. We will continue to grow our capacity to meet the growth of demand. With that in mind, our quantitative targets are the following: we plan to grow our top line by more than 7% on average in the coming three years; we plan that our EBITDA margin will be, for each of the coming three years, above 77%. So we will grow, we will grow our revenues, we will grow our profits. And we also intend to remunerate our shareholders well. Therefore we will continue to pay a pay-out ratio of dividends comprised between 50% and 75%, so that shareholders benefit from our growth and success.
EBM: Michel de Rosen, CEO of Eutelsat, thank you very much.
Michel de Rosen: Thank you for your time and thank you for your questions.
