Alcatel Alenia Space CEO Pascale Sourisse believes the market for satellites will be very strong throughout the next few years and hoped the company could maintain a strong position.

According to Alcatel Alenia’s estimates, the company won more open market satellite orders than anyone else in 2006. It "was a turning point for the future and stable development of the market. We forecast 20 to 25 satellites being order per year between now and 2009."

The upsurge in new satellite orders is in marked contrast with some of the activity in recent years. According to Sourisse, in 2004, there were only 11 satellite ordered, and in 2002, there were only seven satellites ordered."

Sourisse sees no return to the dark days of 2002 anytime soon. "We think the demand for satellite capacity will remain quite strong," she said. "The demand is driven by high- definition Television (HDTV), the development of satellite TV in fast developing countries, as well as mobile applications."

The satellite manufacturer, which will soon come under the ownership of Thales, seems well-positioned to maintain a strong order flow in the next few years.

"We have counted 37 telecoms satellites ordered in 2006," said Sourisse. "These include commercial and defence. 24 were awarded in an open market. In this open market, we have received seven satellite orders giving us a 29 percent marketshare. There is a new feeling of optimism. We hit a record in terms of number of orders in 2006, eight [geostationary] satellite orders, five for the commercial market, and three for the defence market. We have also signed a key contract for GlobalStar. Outside of the telecoms sector, we received a number of orders in other domains."

Sourisse also believes the manufacturer will be able to outperform the market over the next few years in terms of revenue growth.

"We plan to grow more quickly than the market," she said. "The addressable market is growing at five percent between 2006 and 2009. We plan to grow at 10 percent, twice as fast as the overall market. We had 10 percent higher revenues in 2006 compared to 2005."

However, while revenue growth has remained strong, Alcatel Alenia still has work to do to raise its profits. "If you look at the Thales objectives, they are in the range of 8 percent to 10 percent operating profit," she said. "We are not at that level. We have always been profitable over the years. We are growing and those margins are growing. I would say our numbers are lower than the eight percent number which is the typical number for Thales."

In terms of the breakdown of the different markets where Alcatel derives orders, Sourisse said that in 2006, 41 percent of its revenues came from the commercial sector, defence accounted for 24 percent and the civilian/institutional sector accounted for 35 percent.

In 2006, most of the new satellites orderred in the open market were medium or extra large satellites, and Sourisse thinks the demand for the large satellites will remain strong.

"We believe that operators will request more powerful satellites," Sourisse said. "The requests we are receiving for large satellites are based for television, broadband access and mobile applications. 25 percent of [geostiationary] telecoms satellites ordered focus on the mobile services market."

The military market is also likely to be strong over the next few years. Sourisse believes, in particularly, the French government could be a strong customer. "We expect the French minister of defence will order extra capacity such as X-band," she said. "We expect them to also order Ka-band capacity. They want to have access to competitive capacity."

— Mark Holmes