SES stock has lost 41.8 per cent of its value over the past six months, closing near €3.80 on the Luxembourg and Paris exchanges after a further 2.75 per cent drop on October 9th. That leaves the satellite operator trading at roughly one-ninth of its April 2016 level of €33 per share, and well below the €9.89 it commanded as recently as May.

The decline has not followed a straight line. SES will pay its half-yearly dividend on October 16th, a date that usually supports the share price, and the stock did recover a few cents to €3.86 on October 12th. The bounce did not hold. The price keeps sliding.

What is management saying?

CEO Adel Al Saleh has told investors the current quarter will deliver positive business news, and pointed to one concrete win: Sky, which broadcasts pay-TV to the UK and Ireland, has extended its transponder contract with SES. Al Saleh has also said Q4 — now underway — will bring further positive news. SES publishes its latest quarterly figures on November 5th.

Whether contract renewals can offset the structural pressure on the sector is another matter. A satellite industry consultant with an M&A background, speaking on condition of anonymity, was blunt about the cause of the sell-off.

"Simply put, Starlink competition is driving GEO prices down and making inroads into more and more end user's applications – a trend that is expected to continue. Of course there are still niches for GEO, but they are generally narrowing. Unfortunately, the GEO industry has yet to clearly articulate a convincing strategy to compete long-term."

He added that investors have so far found the multi-orbit strategies announced by GEO operators unconvincing, and that the sector's interim dependence on government work carries a caveat: much of that money, in his view, looks like an effort to keep a European space industry alive rather than genuine arm's-length contracting.

Is the multi-orbit pivot working?

SES is transitioning from a pure geostationary (GEO) operator into a multi-tier player. It operates a MEO fleet of mPOWER satellites, continues to invest in MEO, and backs Elveo Mobile, which is building a low-Earth-orbit constellation. The strategy paper is coherent; the share price says the market has yet to be persuaded.

The consultancy verdict hangs over that plan: narrowing GEO niches, falling prices and no clearly articulated long-term competitive answer. Renewal news like the Sky extension stabilises revenue but does not by itself reverse the trend the consultant describes.

What does the C-band payout deliver?

SES also holds a large regulatory asset. Under a Federal Communications Commission arrangement, it will receive compensation for freeing up 160 MHz of upper C-band spectrum in the US:

• The FCC will pay out $6.3 billion (about €5.6 billion) in total, plus transition costs — ground equipment refurbishment and, in SES's case, new satellite launches.
• SES's share of the gross amount is $5.6 billion.
• Eutelsat receives $504 million and Canada's Telesat $189 million.
• SES must hand roughly $1.1 billion of its allocation to former Intelsat shareholders.
• The frequency auction must happen before July 2027, and the FCC requires the transition to be complete by 2030 and 2031, with most of it done by 2030.

Even net of the Intelsat payout, the C-band proceeds amount to several billion dollars — real money for a company whose shares now trade below €4. Yet the market has marked the stock down regardless, suggesting investors view the cash as a one-off buffer rather than a fix for the competitive problem.

What happens next?

The near-term test comes quickly: the October 16th dividend, then the November 5th quarterly numbers, which Al Saleh says will contain the promised positive news. If the multi-orbit strategy and the Sky renewal fail to steady the price before the July 2027 auction window, the C-band billions will remain the most legible line in SES's story.