Revised article - As the EU version of "Starlink" competitor launches, Eutelsat expects revenue to reach 11 billions dollars.

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Gianluca Lo Nostro

Reuters, October 29 - Eutelsat ETL.PA said on Thursday that, as it takes a leading role in the EU's planned project to launch an alternative to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service (link), it expects its commercial services revenue to exceed 10 billion euros ($11.1 billion) between 2032 and 2040.

This Franco-British joint venture operator has been selected to lead the low-Earth orbit (LEO) segment of the EU's IRIS² network, which will consist of 330 satellites. The first IRIS² satellites are scheduled to launch in 2029, with initial service expected to start in 2030.

As President Donald Trump returns to the White House, Europe is seeking to reduce its dependence on U.S. technology, and Eutelsat (link) finds itself in the spotlight as it owns OneWeb—the only alternative low-Earth orbit satellite network apart from SpaceX's SPCX.O Starlink.

The Paris-based company said in its latest trading update that its order backlog now includes 8.9 billion euros of revenue from the design and construction of IRIS², most of which will be recognized between 2027 and 2031. This alone is more than seven times the 1.24 billion euros in revenues Eutelsat generated last year (link) and lifts the total order backlog from 3.4 billion euros at the end of June to 12.1 billion euros.

This outlook is a substantial boost for the company, which aims to offset its declining video broadcasting business with satellite internet services.

OneWeb currently has more than 600 satellites in orbit and plans to launch another 229 satellites under a 1 billion euro expansion plan (link).

Eutelsat said it would invest a total of 3.39 billion euros in IRIS²’s shared and commercial infrastructure between 2027 and 2034 in exchange for usage rights more than double OneWeb's current bandwidth.

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Despite the optimistic outlook, Q1 revenues still fell short of expectations. In the three months to the end of September, like-for-like revenues of its four main operating businesses declined by 2.1% year-on-year to 278.3 million euros. This was below the consensus analyst forecast of 291 million euros compiled by the company.

Eutelsat confirmed its financial targets for the 2026-27 and 2028-29 fiscal years.

(1 US dollar = 0.8971 euro)

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