EUTELSAT Communications Reports Further Growth in Profits for First Half 2009-2010

February 18, 2010

The Board of Directors' meeting of Eutelsat Communications  under the chairmanship of Giuliano Berretta, met yesterday and reviewed the results for the first half year ended December 31, 2009.

Six months ended December 31		2008	2009	Change
Key elements of the consolidated income statement
Revenues	€m	463.5	508.0	+9.6%
EBITDA	€m	375.0	411.6	+9.7%
EBITDA margin	%	80.9	81.0	+0.1 pt
Group share of net income	€m	135.2	139.5	+3.2%
Diluted earnings per share	€	0.615	0.634	+3.1%
Key elements of the consolidated cash flow statement
Net cash flow from operating activities	€m	353.7	316.4	-10.5%
Capital expenditure	€m	140.6	226.1	+60.8%
Operating free cash flow	€m	213.1	90.2	-57.7%
Key elements of financial structure
Net debt	€m	2,408	2,440	+1.3%
Net debt/EBITDA(2)	X	3.34	3.13
Backlog
Backlog	€bn	3.5	4.2	+19.1%

Commenting on the first half 2009-2010 results, Michel de Rosen, CEO of Eutelsat Communications, said: "The strong progress of Eutelsat's results for our first half-year once again underlines the commercial momentum of our markets. It also highlights the efficiency with which our strategy has been implemented over the last years through clearly targeted and entirely self-financed investments. New satellite resources deployed during the past 12 months have been rapidly leased, enabling our revenues to increase by 9% and our backlog by more than 19%. Eutelsat continues to benefit from a very high level of profitability and exceptional visibility on revenues, which now represent more than four years of annual turnover. With this momentum, we are revising upwards our revenue objective to more than €1,020 million with EBITDA in excess of €795 million for the current fiscal year. For the 2009-2012 period, we are now targeting a compound annual revenue growth rate of more than 7%".

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