Eutelsat’s €535m Write-Down Clouds €1bn Defence Win and IRIS² Ambitions

The contradiction at Eutelsat has rarely been starker. The satellite operator is simultaneously booking hundreds of millions in fresh military contracts and securing a pivotal role in Europe’s next-generation space infrastructure — yet its stock is in free fall, hammered by a massive impairment charge and investor anxiety over its stretched valuation. Shares have collapsed more than 43% over the past 30 days, closing recently at around €2.20-2.24, despite ending the year still up about 23% from a steep spike at the May 2026 high of €4.62.

The volatility tells its own story. The annualised 30-day reading tops 105%, and the Relative Strength Index has sunk to between 31 and 32.7 — skirting the classic oversold threshold of 30. But technical indicators offer little solace: the 50-day moving average at roughly €3.00 sits well above the current price, and the stock’s price-to-sales ratio of 2.1 dwarfs the industry median of 0.5, a disconnect that is spooking institutional investors.

A €535 million impairment charge, booked to reflect the brutal transition under way in the satellite market, is the immediate weight on earnings. The write-down stems from internal revaluations that now peg the fair value of Eutelsat shares at about €2.39 — barely above the current market price. That leaves scant margin for error.

Yet the strategic picture is not without bright spots. Eutelsat recently secured the CENTAURE contract with the French defence ministry, part of the wider NEXUS framework agreement that could be worth up to €1 billion. The deal is designed to lock in reliable revenue from highly secure military communications, providing a counterweight to the ongoing weakness in traditional video services over geostationary satellites.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Eutelsat?

Parallel to that, the company is embedded in one of Europe’s most ambitious space projects. Through the SpaceRISE consortium, Eutelsat shares operator duties with SES and Hispasat for the IRIS² constellation — a network of 264 low-earth-orbit satellites that will use laser-based intersatellite links to boost data capacity and cut latency. The infrastructure is built for dual use: government communications will come first, with commercial connectivity for the whole of Europe to follow.

Eutelsat is also eyeing the inflight connectivity market as a longer-term driver, though executives caution that the biggest commercial impact from IRIS² will not materialise until after 2030. In the meantime, the existing OneWeb service is already deployed on hundreds of aircraft, and the company is working on medium-earth-orbit satellites to reduce handover interruptions for mobile users.

Away from the immediate financial pressure, Eutelsat retains a measure of technical influence through Vincent Grivet, who will chair the HbbTV Association until 2028, aiming to fuse satellite broadcasting more tightly with next-generation mobile standards.

But on the chart, the search for a bottom continues. The RSI suggests the stock is nearly oversold, yet analysts expect a prolonged consolidation at current levels before any genuine trend reversal can take hold. For now, Eutelsat remains a high-beta play where sentiment and expectation — rather than fundamentals — are driving the daily swings.