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Arianespace Sees Lower Sales
Paris (AFP) January 12, 2000 - The chairman of Arianespace said on Wednesday there was a strong take-off in demand for commercial satellite launches, after a slowdown in 1999 which dented the European rocket consortium's sales. Arianespace, which markets the Ariane 4 and 5 rockets, holds around half the world market for placing satellites into orbit and competes against US aerospace giants Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. "The market is currently seeing a sharp recovery, particularly from American operators of geostationary satellites," said Arianespace's Jean-Marie Luton at a news conference in Paris. "The number of (launch) tenders announced since December leads us to conclude the satellite market has picked up." Arianespace would show a "positive" net financial result for 1999, Luton said but gave no figure. The consortium, which groups a number of private sector firms, posted 1998 net profit of 93 million francs (14 million euros, 14.5 million dollars). Turnover for 1999 fell to 6.4 billion francs from 7.12 billion in 1998. "That is less than expected, but there were only launches for five months due to the lack of availability of satellites," Luton said. Satellite manufacturers last year failed to hit tough delivery deadlines they set with operators and a number of failures in orbit led to checks on the ground of satellites in the same series. Arianespace has orders for 41 satellite launches, worth 3.2 billion euros. It launched its first commercial payload on the heavyweight Ariane 5 rocket in December and five more launches are due in 2000. Six are planned in 2001, six in 2002 and eight in 2003. The older Ariane 4 has 23 launches scheduled until 2002.
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