The EU commission awards the IRIS2 to SpaceRise On October 31st the EU commission announced it had awarded a concession agreement to SpaceRise, the Eutelsat/SES-led consortium. No details have been disclosed so far. SpaceRise was the only bidder and given the strong political support for this program the EU had no alternatives than to choose this consortium. IRIS2 will be a state-of-the-art LEO, MEO, GEO system whose full entry into service is planned for early 2030. It is Europe''s answer to Starlink/Kuiper. SpaceRise said to invest EUR4bn in capex and tax payers to fund another EUR8bn According to SIR, an industry newsletter, Eutelsat is to invest EUR2bn, SES a little bit more than EUR1bn and Hispasat a little less than EUR1bn. SIR referred to an unconfirmed total project cost of EUR12bn. So far, the EU Parliament voted EUR2.4bn funding to 2027 and the European Space Agency voted a further EUR0.6bn to finance this program. Securing EU funding past 2027 looks like the main risk for the industry. According to SES most of its related capex will be deployed from 2028, presumably after EU funding for 2028-2032 has been secured. The company stated it will maintain its investment grade rating and its dividend. IRR to exceed 10% with built-in protection mechanisms SES is to generate an IRR above its target threshold of 10%. The concession agreement will include built-in protection mechanisms to guarantee a minimum IRR level. We believe IRIS2 is likely to embark Eutelsat OneWeb Gen 2 payloads and reduce the investment burden for shareholders. More details to come but IRIS2 is a positive for SES/ETL SpaceRise and the EU Commission will now engage in finalising the precise contractual agreement. We see this news development as a positive for SES (+) and Eutelsat (-). Commercial operators will benefit from massive public funding support, increase their competitiveness and are in line to generate a double digit IRR on their investments with a guaranteed...