LONDON (Reuters) - British satellite company Inmarsat Plc (L:ISA) delayed the launch of its third Global Xpress satellite on Monday following a failure by its launch rocket partner at the weekend, knocking its shares and forcing it to trim its outlook.
The news sent shares in the group, which counts merchant ships, airlines, the broadcast media and humanitarian aid agencies amongst its customers, down 5 percent at the open of trading.
Inmarsat launched the second satellite for its new Global Xpress (GX) high-capacity service in February - which is not yet in service - and a third was scheduled to go into orbit in early June. The company requires three satellites to be able to provide global coverage.
The failure of the Proton Breeze M launch in Kazakhstan on Saturday, when a rocket carrying a Mexican satellite malfunctioned and burnt up over Siberia minutes after launch, means Inmarsat can now not give a date for its third satellite launch.
Inmarsat's launch partner, ILS, was also involved in the failed rocket at the weekend and Inmarsat's third Xpress satellite had been at the Kazakhstan site preparing for its launch.
With an investigation now required to establish the cause of the failure, Inmarsat expects the delay to result in a small negative impact on its 2015 revenue and earnings.
It suspended its guidance of an 8 to 12 percent compound annual growth rate in wholesale mobile satellite services revenue over 2014-16 but said its broader guidance of $500 million of additional revenue from GX within five years remained in place.
"This incident involving a failed Proton launch from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome is extremely unfortunate and will inevitably delay our launch plans for our third Global Xpress satellite," Chief Executive Rupert Pearce said.
Shares in the group opened down 5 percent and were trading 3.8 percent lower at 12.38 p.m. ET, valuing the group at 4.3 billion pounds ($6.74 billion).