Late in November 2023, our Director of Maritime, Joshua Flood, was given the opportunity to attend Marlink’s maritime analysts and press briefing session in London. Joshua provides a summary below of the inner workings of Marlink:
“Held in a boutique hotel in Soho, London, the briefing session was in quite a chic location. Erik Ceuppens (CEO of Marlink Group) and Tore Morten Olsen (President of Maritime Division in Marlink Group) were also in attendance and provided insightful commentary on recent developments in the marketplace and internally about Marlink.
Despite the group’s size and customer footprint, the firm is relatively understated considering it is likely responsible for over 25% of the global maritime retail connectivity satellite revenues in 2023.
With the popularity of new VSAT services (Starlink most prominently, but Marlink partners include Eutelsat OneWeb, Telesat Lightspeed, Amazon Kuiper and SES’s O3b MEO network) and a holistic hybrid approach to vessel connectivity as well as other services, Marlink’s maritime business has performed outstandingly, a bumper year with estimated global revenues greater than $720 million.
Valour Consultancy anticipates the overall Marlink group to have recorded a 20% growth in 2023 compared to 2022.
Its maritime business, the biggest division within the group (roughly three times bigger than its EEG, Energy, Enterprise and Government group), is estimated to have grown by double-digit percentages in 2023 from 2022.
One crucial aspect of the group’s strategy and revenues is augmenting Digital (value-added services such as cybersecurity, vessel data monitoring, IT management and SD-WAN services) up. We believe more than 30% of the firm’s revenues are from digital, managed, and professional services.
Delving into the nuts and bolts…
- Valour Consultancy believes the company has more than 1,400 active Starlink terminals within its maritime business at the end of 2023. Its EEG business is still significant and will have around 600 active terminals at the start of 2024.
- Marlink will term all its Starlink business as “Sealink Next Gen” from henceforth.
- Taking a few steps back, Marlink has around 8,000 vessels presently, so there is still room to grow for Starlink, and other MEO/LEO operator partners of the service provider to grow within its remaining 6,600 GEO VSAT installed vessel base.*
- Interestingly, Marlink’s EEG customer installed unit base (~2,200) is fewer than its maritime but the penetration of Starlink terminals (~600 terminals) in EEG is a higher portion compared to maritime, we believe.
- As highlighted earlier, the group’s revenue mix between maritime and EEG is 75% and 25%, respectively. Readers should note that Bridge Electronics (acquired Telemar business) still makes up a reasonable amount of sales.
- There is also Marlink’s maritime MSS business to consider. Although it’s not highlighted much, Marlink is one of the biggest resellers of MSS services to maritime vessels. Not only Inmarsat’s FBB but Iridium’s services, such as Certus and Openport. It would be fair to claim, both Inmarsat and Iridium are equally split, in vessel count, across Marlink’s MSS customer base.
- Valour Consultancy foresees its maritime MSS to have grown by nearly 20% in 2023 from 2022, with price increases of late.
- Finally, despite the company’s growing LEO VSAT business in maritime, the firm has continued to increase its GEO VSAT installed base in 2023 compared to 2022.
After the press session, I came to realise what a remarkable year it has been for Marlink Group, particularly its maritime business. The firm continues to push and evolve its hybrid connectivity services and is still driving its digital value-added services. Marlink has been very consistent with its leadership team, with many of its leaders being in the maritime or energy connectivity sphere for decades. And finally, I mentioned this point with its acquisition of ITC Global and a quote from Warren Buffet. Marlink is very astute at finding good value for money in the market, its recent GEO contract signings with Eutelsat and Intelsat will indubitably be signed with very favorable terms to them.”
More information on the maritime VSAT and MSS market can be found in the next edition of our report on The Future of Maritime Connectivity, which is due to be published in April. Valour Consultancy is delighted to offer discounts of 15% to companies that purchase the report in advance and take part in our market research.
*On the whole, all the new LEO VSAT services are being taken up as companion solutions with GEO VSAT and MSS. In the future, this could change; thus, assuming all GEO VSAT vessels will potentially use LEO VSAT is naïve as some ships could use MSS and LEO VSAT. However, for the purpose of short term simplistic projections, the number of GEO VSAT vessels provides a useful measuring stick.
