Avanti Communications Share Discussion Threads

[5dally] 22/9/2009 08:16

Yes codhead,,,one to be in I think :-)

[codhead1] 22/9/2009 07:27

Going from strength to strength. A no brainer to get in now with so many contracts signed and the launch getting ever closer.And even now showing a profit.Nice one.

[5dally] 22/9/2009 07:24

RNS Number : 4238Z
Avanti Communications Group Plc
22 September 2009



Date:
22 September 2009

On behalf of:
Avanti Communications Group plc ('Avanti', 'the Group' or 'the Company')

Embargoed until:
0700hrs





Avanti Communications Group plc

Preliminary Report for the year ended 30 June 2009




Avanti Communications Group Plc (AIM: AVN), the satellite operator, announces its audited Preliminary Results for the full year ended 30 June 2009.




Key points




Presentation of profit before tax of £1.8 million, well ahead of expectations, resulting from strong operating result and effective hedging

Strong progress in creating a distribution network with 48 service providers now buying bandwidth in various volumes around Europe with a substantial new business pipeline

Successful and timely completion of rural broadband project with the Scottish Government

Compelling evidence of the growing importance of broadband to governments and consumers

An increasing available market for Avanti

Completion of a £31.5m equity placing, plus ESA €12.5m contribution to finance Launch Vehicle upgrade for HYLAS

Satellite on target for launch from French Guyana in Q2 2010




Financial highlights




Revenue £ 8.0 million (2008: £5.9 million)

Profit before tax £1.8 million (2008: loss £1.4 million)

Profit after tax £1.0 million (2008: loss £1.0 million)

Closing cash and cash equivalents balance £24.6 million (2008: £35.2 million)

Following receipt of equity proceeds on 3 July 2009 cash and cash equivalents was £55.9 million




Commenting on the results, John Brackenbury, CBE, Chairman said:




"I have great pleasure in presenting Avanti Communications Group plc's results for the year ended 30 June 2009. Through the exercise of cost discipline, prudent financial risk management, and the sale of services on our interim satellite capacity, we have managed to exceed expectations comfortably.




"We are now in our launch year, the year in which we will begin to realise our potential. The procurement of one of the most complex and innovative commercial satellite systems ever built has progressed well, with the system expected to operate at the top end of technical performance expectations. With the support of ESA and our very strong shareholder base we took the opportunity to de-risk our project with the purchase of an Arianespace launch, the World's most reliable launch service.




"During the year our market has grown and as a result, the decision of Avanti three years ago to make a pioneering investment in Ka band satellites is widely regarded as farsighted. With the launch of HYLAS we hope and expect that Avanti will become one of the World's most exciting telecommunications businesses - a pioneer, a market leader and a British national champion."







Enquiries to:



Avanti Communications
www.avantiplc.com

David Williams / Nigel Fox
020 7749 1600






Redleaf Communications Ltd
[e-mail]

Samantha Robbins / Paul Dulieu
020 7566 6700






Cenkos Securities



Julian Morse/Ivonne Cantu
020 7397 8900








Notes to Editors




About Avanti Communications




Avanti sells satellite broadband services to telecoms companies which use them to supply homes and businesses.

Avanti's first satellite, called HYLAS is under construction and will be the first superfast broadband satellite launched in Europe.

The market for high speed satellite broadband products in Europe is estimated at 70 million homes.

Avanti currently provides satellite broadband services to customers in Europe using leased satellite capacity which it will transfer to HYLAS on launch.

The European Commission has set aside funding for rural broadband projects in 79 regions across Europe with a total value of €2.8 billion over the next five years.






Chairman's Statement




I have great pleasure in presenting Avanti Communications Group plc's results for the year ended 30 June 2009. We have significantly exceeded expectations through the exercise of cost discipline, prudent financial risk management, and the sale of services on our interim satellite capacity.




We are now in our launch year, the year in which potential begins to turn into profit and cash. During 2008 we made important progress in procurement, finance and sales. The procurement of one of the most complex and innovative commercial satellite systems ever built has progressed well, with the system expected to operate at the top end of technical performance expectations. With the support of the British government, ESA and our very strong shareholder base we took the opportunity to de-risk our project with the purchase of a launch from Arianespace, the World's most reliable launch service provider.




During the year, our market grew strongly. Terrestrial broadband telecoms technologies continue to exclude very large populations around the World. There is now consensus that some 70m homes in Europe will not be able to access terrestrial broadband at speeds of 2Mb or more and consumer are demanding ever faster service. HYLAS will be the first superfast broadband satellite to launch in Europe and would be full with just 300,000 users so we have a vast yet lightly competed market to exploit.




During the financial year ended June 2009, the Company has achieved a number of key milestones.




Presentation of maiden profit before tax of £1.8 million resulting from strong operating result and effective hedging

Strong progress in creating a distribution network with 48 service providers now committed around Europe plus a substantial new business pipeline

Successful and timely completion of largest ever rural broadband project with the Scottish Government

Compelling evidence of the growing importance of broadband to governments and consumers

Completion of a £31.5m equity placing, plus ESA €12.5m contribution to finance launch service change

Satellite on target for launch from French Guyana in Q2 2010




During the year our market has grown and as a result, the decision of Avanti three years ago to make a pioneering investment in Ka band satellites is widely regarded as farsighted. We have an excellent management team and an impressive shareholder list and so I am confident that we can continue to lead in a large and growing global market.




With the launch of HYLAS we hope and expect that Avanti will become one of the World's most exciting telecommunications businesses - a pioneer, a market leader and a British national champion.







John Brackenbury, CBE

Chairman







Chief Executive's Report




Introduction




I am pleased to report results for the year which exceed expectations. Our interim service has sold well, and we have been able to use this activity to prepare our business operations systems for full scale roll out as soon as HYLAS launches in the second quarter of 2010. Also, with the wise counsel of a very experienced board, we made the right decisions to protect and enhance our balance sheet through the credit crunch: securing debt finance early in the project, keeping our cash in safe custody and hedging currency and interest rate risks effectively. The successful development of our business model and the expansion of our market then enabled us to win the support of existing shareholders and an impressive array of new institutions in raising finance to improve the quality and reliability of our launch service, thereby removing the last significant technology risk from our project.




Business Overview




Avanti's business model remains simple. We own and operate a satellite called HYLAS. This satellite will be the first "Ka band" superfast broadband satellite launched outside America and one of the most advanced payloads ever built. It will deliver high speed broadband at very competitive prices around Western and Eastern Europe. We will provide broadband at speeds up to 10Mb (with the return path by satellite at up to 5Mb). The customer uses a small satellite dish, typically between 45cm and 78cms, and a small satellite modem connected to the PC or server. Ka band satellite technology is new, although the first generation has been proven both technically and commercially in the USA. The technology enable us to use higher frequency bands with multiple spot beams meaning that we can transmit at higher speeds and serve many more subscribers per satellite than was previously possible.




We sell to telecoms service providers, who are obliged to make minimum initial commitment to service volumes. They then sell to end users within their defined territories in the expectation of building a large subscriber base and increasing their bandwidth purchases from us. We provide to these service providers a managed broadband service (not just raw bandwidth) along with all of the software systems, marketing support and training they need to deliver service. We call these service providers VNOs (Virtual Network Operators). Our VNOs need to make no initial capex investment since we manage the satellite and own and operate all associated ground control and network communications infrastructure, with the sole exception of the end user customers' satellite dish and modem.




In addition to regular consumer and business customers, our broadband product has begun to find new markets this year. We currently have services running providing "backhaul" for mobile phone base stations (i.e. carrying user traffic from a rural base station back to the network centre), providing telemetry for wind farms and providing outside broadcasting transmissions for television companies. The product is the same, it's all broadband to Avanti, but the applications which customers find for our very high speed low cost services are definitely growing.




This was our second full year offering satellite broadband services on our rented capacity, and during the year we rapidly completed Europe's largest ever rural broadband project, for the Scottish Government. The success was verified by the award of a second contract from that customer. The service we provide to those and other current customers will be upgraded when HYLAS launches. The activity has had three benefits to our business:




We have demonstrated the role of satellite in solving the digital divide and raised its profile. This has been important and timely in the context of government exercises like Digital Britain.

We have a proven market and our ability to access it, using the early service to recruit 48 service providers in 12 countries in Europe.

We have learned the lessons of operational deployment in volume. We have field tested all of the back office software systems which we have developed to manage customer activation, support and billing and have completed detailed process manuals to guide both our staff and our VNOs in their management of the products. This means that when HYLAS launches, execution of the ramp up in business should be smooth.




The market demand for broadband in general and the competitive dynamic has evolved significantly since the beginning of our project. It is now overwhelmingly clear that:




Competing technologies leave very large populations unserved for reasons of technical and economic limitation. It is widely held that:

Copper ADSL networks leave populations of between 10% and 40% without adequate broadband all over the World

Fibre optic cable networks to the home are not economically viable in large parts of the world, leaving at least 40% of the population unserved even in densely populated countries like the UK

3G/4G networks, whilst providing excellent mobile data, cannot be used for fixed broadband substitution because they have insufficient capacity and spectrum available to cope with the high volumes of data (especially video) now demanded by consumers at home.

Wi-fi and Wi-Max technology suffering from a combination of line of sight, quality of service, base station density and infrastructure cost efficiency issues and has not made a significant impact on any major European markets.

Universal broadband service is now regarded as critical national infrastructure in most countries of the world and governments are acting to accelerate its achievement.

There remains very little competition to Avanti. Only one other dedicated Ka band satellite is planned for Europe, launching a year after HYLAS. In aggregate the two satellites can serve probably at most only 1 million 2Mb services, in a market which has potential demand for 70 million.




There is now broad consensus in government and telecoms circles that Ka band satellites have a major role to play in the patchwork of varying technologies which will provide universal high speed broadband. We are confident therefore of our future market opportunity.




We have made great strides this year in building our distribution channels. We now have 48 VNOs signed in twelve countries (Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Serbia, Hungary, and Albania).




These VNOs commitments range from £100,000 to £9,000,000 and from 3 to 15 years. For the first year of service we have more than 13% of HYLAS capacity pre-sold and hope to top 20% by the day of launch. These VNOs of course all expect to build their own subscriber bases rapidly and to return to Avanti to buy more capacity. Based on Avanti's experiment of offering service on rented capacity, it is clear that a small specialised VNO can sell and install at least 2,000 subscribers per annum per country (especially with EU funding assistance). HYLAS will be full with around 200,000 - 300,000 end user customers, depending on the mix of service levels sold by the VNOs (0.5Mb to 10Mb). We therefore have enough VNOs already to be confident that we can achieve our plan to fill HYLAS quickly and are currently signing one or two new VNOs per month. We are also now making progress with larger telecoms companies who are typically adopting satellite broadband as a product for the first time to address their own universal service obligations and therefore the average order size is likely to increase.




Manufacture of the satellite is proceeding well, and we remain on schedule to launch within the previously announced window of April to June 2010. During the year we raised £31.5m in an equity placing plus €12.5m contribution from the British Government via the European Space Agency to fund the upgrade of our Launch Service to Arianespace, the most reliable launch service available. Moving to Arianespace was expensive, but has given greater comfort and certainty to investors, customers and our government partners. We have thus removed the last major technology risk, and can now focus our energies on maximising the price and pace at which we sell out HYLAS capacity.




Outlook




We now have full confidence in the imminent delivery of a fully operational satellite into orbit. Our fortunes now rest on our ability to sell out HYLAS quickly and at the best yield. The distribution channels we have established should enable us to achieve this. But we are also now finding that the larger traditional telecoms service providers are beginning to adopt our product in volume and also new application markets are opening up. The sales pipeline is strong, and should be given a further boost by the Digital Britain project in the UK and the increasing activity of projects in Europe funded by European Commission budgets. We are highly confident that HYLAS will sell out quickly, and are therefore busy working on two new projects to increase our capacity. An investment bank has been retained to help us to close financing which has been offered by government sponsors. The success of this effort is not yet definitive but we hope to report positively on this soon.







David Williams

Chief Executive

[blue forever] 17/9/2009 08:39

Appear to have run out of steam.Hope results next week give the share price a push!

[evianone] 13/9/2009 21:58

smarm me 2 (don't post much)glad i hold far from doubling though!! look forward to meeting you in October.

[smarm] 12/9/2009 13:54

evian - LOL - not everywhere but and I don't post much outside of you-know-where. I've near doubled on this one. No brainer so long as the launch goes well. I particularly like the business continuity product. Brilliant idea.

S

[blue forever] 11/9/2009 21:37

ok,thanks ,so does that mean that 3.81 is the opening mid on Monday?(assuming nothing price sensitive happens over the weekend)

[marksnsparkle] 11/9/2009 20:51

Blue forever ... its referring to the closing auction that takes place every day after the market closes at 4:30pm

Throughout the regular 8am to 4:30 pm. trading day there is automatic execution of trades in SETS stocks

At 4:30pm., automatic execution finishes and the market moves into the auction period. The initial auction period runs for five minutes, during which time market participants can place both market and limit orders.

A mathematical algorithm is used at the end of the 5-minute period to calculate a single closing price for the auction, calculated to be the price at which the greatest number of shares can be executed.

If the closing algorithm calculates a price that is more than 5 percent away from the average price during the last 10 minutes of normal trading (4:20pm to 4:30pm.), the auction process moves into a price-monitoring extension.

The price monitoring extension period allows time for liquidity providing or opportunistic market participants, such as market makers, to enter orders to balance the market.

[evianone] 11/9/2009 20:23

smarm your everywhere! I'm feeling happy 2

[jimbo55] 11/9/2009 19:16

At a complete guess, it's because people were buying post-closure at 4:30pm

[blue forever] 11/9/2009 18:58

Don`t really understand what the significance of a "price monitoring extension" is. Can anyone explain? Is it good or bad for us?
Is that why the closing mid price finished higher than the bid/offer and does it mean a higher bid/offer on Monday?
TIA

[terryebby] 11/9/2009 15:58

it does now look like a smooth tredn up til launch takes us above £5. Thats what the last 3 months are telling us

[smarm] 11/9/2009 14:58

Fill my heart with song
Let me sing for ever more
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore

....yep, nice day today.

S

[5dally] 11/9/2009 13:10

Well that's what I call a decent rise,,,:-) I love this stock

[terryebby] 11/9/2009 12:48

Let me see what Spring is like on Jupiter and Mars ! Easy to become light headed at the prospects for this stock

[blue forever] 11/9/2009 11:46

"Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars......."

[terryebby] 11/9/2009 07:30

Avanti mentioned positively in a Merrill Lynch Satellite Sector report, good write up, says satellite broadband a positive reason to invest in any participating Satco and Avanti is a pureplay on this market

[blue forever] 10/9/2009 14:33

well,it would be nice if they all went up together.;-)

[sg31] 10/9/2009 14:31

I'll be happy if they attach the satellite to it.

[blue forever] 10/9/2009 14:26

Let`s hope they attach the share price to the Ariane rocket!

[5dally] 10/9/2009 13:22

I topped up to on the recent dips,,,,can't understand anyone selling this

[cestnous] 09/9/2009 11:35

Bid rising so bought a few more today. Expecting a good rise up to / on results

[5dally] 02/9/2009 13:33

Not long to wait for news can't see why anyone would be selling now


Date:
14 August 2009

On behalf of:
Avanti Communications Group plc ('Avanti' or 'the Company')



For Immediate Release







Avanti Communications Group plc

Notice of Preliminary Results




Avanti Communications Group plc (AIM: AVN), the broadband satellite operator, will announce its preliminary results for the year ended 30 June 2009 on Tuesday, 22 September 2009.




An analysts' briefing will be held at 0930hrs on the day at the offices of Avanti Communications. To register to attend or for further information, please contact Redleaf Communications on 020 7566 6700 or by email at [e-mail].

[sg31] 28/8/2009 12:32

about 4k traded on AIM and 9k on Plus Markets.

[cestnous] 28/8/2009 11:45

Oui, c'est ott. La plunge. Merde!