Hanwha Systems has sold its entire 5.4% stake in Eutelsat OneWeb, Europe’s leading satellite communications company. With the company’s value shrinking to about one-third of its purchase price, Hanwha Systems incurred a loss of approximately 200 billion won.
According to Reuters and other sources on June 5 (local time), Hanwha Systems sold its entire 5.4% stake in Eutelsat OneWeb for $88.5 million (approximately 120 billion won). This is significantly less than the $300 million (about 345 billion won based on the exchange rate at the time) invested in 2021.
At that time, Hanwha Systems announced its entry into the satellite communications service market by securing an 8.8% stake in OneWeb, a British satellite internet company, for $300 million. In 2023, when OneWeb was incorporated into France’s Eutelsat, the name changed to Eutelsat OneWeb, and Hanwha Systems’ stake decreased to 5.4%. With the change in ownership stake, Hanwha Group also had to relinquish its non-executive director position
Hanwha Systems decided on this sale, concluding that further stake acquisition was meaningless without board management rights. The strategic shift to focus more on defense satellite operations and military communications rather than civilian satellite services, following a re-evaluation of new businesses and investments last year, also influenced the decision.
Hanwha Systems maintains that it will continue to pursue low Earth orbit satellite communication services, focusing on the defense sector, separate from this stake sale. A company official stated, “As we hold the position of exclusive domestic supplier of Eutelsat OneWeb’s low Earth orbit satellite network for the Korean military until 2030, we can stably carry out the ‘Commercial Low Earth Orbit Satellite-based Communication System’ project.”
Hanwha Systems has been actively participating in military low Earth orbit satellite network construction projects, including developing satellite payloads for Korea’s first low Earth orbit communication test satellite project led by the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) in 2018.