TAMPA, Fla. — Strong government demand helped send Eutelsat’s low Earth orbit (LEO) revenues soaring 84% over the past 12 months, although the French operator expects its legacy geostationary business to continue weighing on profits in the year ahead.
The company reported 187 million euros ($216 million) in revenues from its OneWeb LEO broadband constellation for the 12 months ending June 30, representing around 15% of total sales for its 2024–25 fiscal year.
However, connectivity revenues from Eutelsat’s fleet in geostationary orbit (GEO) fell more than 7% to 431 million euros over the period, when adjusted for currency fluctuations on a like-for-like basis.
GEO video revenues also dropped 6.5% to 608 million euros.
Total revenues increased 1.6% to 1.24 billion euros, driven by a 24% uptick in government services amid growing demand over Ukraine and countries pursuing sovereign digital infrastructure.
Adjusted EBITDA — or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization — was flat year-on-year at around 676 million euros on a like-for-like basis.
Eutelsat also reported a revenue backlog of about 3.5 billion euros, down from 3.9 billion euros the year before. As with last year, roughly 1 billion euros of that total is tied to OneWeb.
Growing LEO dominance
Eutelsat expects LEO revenues to grow another 50% in the year ahead as connectivity and OneWeb become an increasingly central part of its business following their 2023 merger.
Even still, the company warned that growth won’t be enough to offset the decline in its GEO business, where video sales are also being impacted by sanctions on Russia following the country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The operator is targeting flat revenues for the year ending June 30, 2026, and a slightly lower EBITDA margin.
Speaking on an Aug. 5 earnings call, recently appointed CEO Jean-François Fallacher said Eutelsat is nearing deployment of the last five satellite network portals needed to enable global LEO coverage by 2026 — two years later than originally planned.
Full coverage will help the company generate between 1.5 billion euros and 1.7 billion euros during the 2028-2029 fiscal year, according to Fallacher. The operator also aims to deploy 440 additional OneWeb satellites before the end of the decade to upgrade capabilities and ensure service continuity.
Eutelsat currently has more than 650 OneWeb satellites in LEO and around 34 spacecraft in GEO.
“LEO is no longer an emerging technology,” Fallacher said on the earnings call.
“This is a proven and scalable solution that is really unlocking entirely new use cases — and thanks to its low-latency, high throughput and fast, flexible deployment — has a lot of potential.”
Fallacher pointed to a recent 10-year agreement worth up to one billion euros with the French military for OneWeb services.
France is also leading Eutelsat’s 1.5 billion euro capital raise, which Fallacher said would help secure additional financing to fully fund its expansion plans and commitments to IRIS², Europe’s sovereign broadband constellation backed by a public-private partnership.
Being “the only one of two [LEO broadband] operators that is currently not a U.S. company” uniquely positions Eutelsat as geopolitical dynamics shift, Fallacher added, referring to SpaceX’s Starlink as the other.
Competitive pressure builds
However, other LEO broadband players are closing in.
U.S.-based Amazon has so far deployed 78 Project Kuiper satellites for a LEO constellation it aims to bring online late this year or early next. The company announced an agreement with Australia’s NBN Co Aug. 5 to provide LEO services to 300,000 homes and businesses beyond the reach of the government-owned telco’s ground network, starting mid-2026.
Canadian geostationary operator Telesat, which reports earnings Aug. 6, also plans to begin deploying its Lightspeed LEO network next year.