SES is entering 2026 with one of the most strategically significant positions in the worldwide satellite communications market, following its US$3.1 billion acquisition of Intelsat on 17 July 2025.
The Luxembourg-based operator has consolidated itself as the most advanced commercially deployed multi-orbit connectivity platform worldwide, operating nearly 120 satellites across GEO and MEO orbits. European regulators cleared the Intelsat deal without conditions.
Industry analysts noted that the acquisition strengthened SES’s competitive standing against Starlink’s low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation and Amazon Kuiper’s upcoming LEO system. Rather than replicating the LEO model, SES is differentiating by combining GEO’s resilience and broad coverage with MEO’s low-latency performance – a hybrid capability few players can match globally.
Throughout 2025, SES emphasized that its architecture strategy extends beyond simply adding satellites. The company is transitioning to a unified network model that integrates ground, cloud, scheduling, and space systems into a single intelligent fabric. The O3b mPOWER satellite launches in July 2025 marked a key milestone in this evolution. Once operational in 2026, the new satellites are expected to enhance MEO performance consistency and mesh routing predictability across aviation, maritime, and government broadband segments.
SES also remains a key participant in IRIS², Europe’s sovereign multi-orbit communications initiative designed to provide secure, high-reliability satellite services. IRIS² represents a long-term industrial project that will intensify through the late 2020s, positioning SES among the central operators within Europe’s strategic connectivity framework.
Financially, 2025 highlighted the scale effect of the Intelsat merger. SES reported €1.747 billion in revenue for the nine months to September 2025 – almost 20 percent higher year-on-year due to Intelsat’s mid-year consolidation. Network revenue grew by more than 36 percent, driven by strong demand from airline broadband, government secure-bandwidth projects, and enterprise networks.
The company signed approximately €1.4 billion in new contracts during the period, building a combined backlog of €7.1 billion. Full-year 2025 guidance was reaffirmed at revenue between €2.6 and €2.7 billion and adjusted EBITDA between €1.17 and €1.21 billion.
However, quarterly profitability missed analyst forecasts due to integration expenses, which triggered investor concern and a temporary share price decline. The shortfall was primarily linked to slower-than-expected synergy realization rather than revenue softness. Net debt rose to around €6 billion compared with roughly €1.1 billion a year earlier, reflecting ongoing leverage from the acquisition.
SES remains in a capital-loading phase even as revenues scale. This matters because IRIS² requires sustained investment, and O3b mPOWER’s rollout will be progressive rather than immediate.
customer experience
The most sensitive topic in the SES narrative today is not actually revenue, not guidance, not backlog and not the EU approval. It is customer experience. A large portion of SES’s business is high-value connectivity to aircraft, cruise lines, offshore energy, mining, humanitarian logistics networks and rural mobile backhaul for telcos in underserved markets.
During 2025, users in these categories have reported service friction in certain geographies or peak-traffic corridors. Aviation operators, particularly on long-haul transatlantic routes, have observed intermittent latency spikes and brief stability variation during GEO-to-MEO handoffs.
Cruise operators have noted connectivity degradation during port-arrival congestion windows when thousands of passengers simultaneously connect.
Industrial and NGO use cases in remote regions have complained of provisioning delays following the Intelsat integration, resulting in slower activation cycles than before the acquisition.
Meanwhile, mobile operators in equatorial regions have seen SLA escalation cycles when severe weather interferes with capacity.
SES says explicitly that these problems stem from transitional resource balancing, a temporary pressure period caused by merging two tier-one networks and shifting load hierarchies.
SES attributes these issues to transitional resource balancing during network integration and says performance consistency will improve once additional O3b mPOWER satellites enter service in 2026.
Capital expenditure
Capital expenditure remains a major theme in SES’s transformation plan. The company allocated between €0.6 and €0.7 billion in capex for 2025, focusing on satellite deployment, gateway modernization, routing automation, and cloud-edge integration. IRIS² adds a further investment layer as SES aims to maintain leadership within Europe’s sovereign satellite ecosystem. This means elevated capital spending will likely continue during the current scaling and integration period.
In essence, 2025 represents a structural transition year for SES. The company has achieved one of the most strategically advantageous positions in global satellite communications but is still navigating the natural challenges of a large-scale merger. Revenues are expanding, the backlog is strong, and competitive positioning is improving. Yet debt remains high, margins are under temporary pressure, and user experience in the most congested corridors is uneven.
SES expects these pressures to ease as mPOWER capacity and automation mature through 2026, unlocking the full potential of its multi-orbit platform. When that occurs, SES will not just be a large satellite operator – it will stand as the reference model for integrated global connectivity.
Fasna Shabeer
