Satellite operator SES will this year celebrate its 40th Anniversary. CEO Adel Al-Saleh has been doing the rounds with local Luxembourg press and TV to update citizens of progress at the company, and to allay fears that a recent round of 68 redundancies at its Betzdorf headquarters will be followed by more.
Al-Saleh told RTL Today that its current plan to acquire rival Intelsat (for $2.8 billion) is progressing well, and he was hopeful that the acquisition would wrap by June. The merger would not mean a shift of the company’s HQ, which will remain in Luxembourg. SES will unveil its year-end results on February 26th.
SES employs around 600 staff at Betzdorf amongst a global total of some 2,000. The acquisition of Intelsat will mean some rationalization of overlapping positions in particular at ‘management’ levels, but new positions would be created.
But Al-Saleh also issued a caution, saying, “Our costs are too high in several areas. We need money for our investments. One way to achieve this is to cut costs so that we can invest this money. This has nothing to do with the acquisition of Intelsat or India. As a company, we need to streamline.”
Intelsat is formally located in Luxembourg, but its administrative HQ is in Washington DC.
Al-Saleh commented on Elon Musk’s importance to the new Trump administration, and said that it was not particularly comfortable to see its biggest competitor so close to the US president, but that the market was open, and there was transparency.
He told the Luxembourg Times that he was confident that SES’s innovation, government contracts, and its upcoming merger with Intelsat will secure its future.
Some good news emerged in that SES O3b/mPOWER satellites are being used in the Asia-Pacific region in conjunction with Viasat’s Energy Services division.
“Offshore Energy mPOWERED was deployed in late October 2024 aboard a Floating Production Storage and Offloading Vessel (FPSO), delivering high-performance connectivity tailored to the specific needs of the offshore energy sector. The O3b mPOWER connectivity will support both critical and non-critical communications onboard, ensuring reliable, high-speed connectivity with guaranteed service level agreement (SLA). This deployment marks a significant step forward in enabling digitalisation and operational efficiency for offshore operations,” stated a joint press statement.
