Eutelsat forecasts OneWeb merger to boost annual sales to $2B by 2027

The world’s third largest satellite operator by revenue, Eutelsat Communications, said it expected its planned merger with British OneWeb to lift annual sales to 2 billion euros ($1.95 billion) by 2027.

The merger which was announced in July 2022, is closely monitored by the British and French governments. The merger aims to combine OneWeb’s low-earth orbit constellation with Eutelsat’s geostationary satellite fleet to offer fast internet service by satellite.

The foremost firms currently challenging for a slice of the satellite internet market are SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper.

The French group forecasts annual sales of the merged entity to amount to nearly 1.2 billion euros in 2023, following the agreement’s finalization. The group said it expected its core operating profit to increase at an even faster pace than revenue.

The EBITDA or Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortization for the newly formed company should grow by over 10% each year to reach approximately 1.4 billion euros in 2027, rising from 700 million euros in 2023, the firm said.

Eutelsat—which would completely own OneWeb as a result of the merger, which values the British satellite firm at nearly $3.4 billion—aims to tap into the growth of real-time video gaming and rising demands for fast internet connection speeds from firms, which increasingly rely on cloud computing services for their daily operations.