AAC Clyde Space reports ‘steady’ growth in 2022

AAC Clyde Space, a Swedish space services company with manufacturing facilities in Scotland, has just reported “steady” growth in its latest full-year financial results as the industry bounced back from the COVID-19 pandemic. While the company saw a slight loss in its fourth quarter compared to 2021, its full-year net sales increased, and AAC Clyde Space hopes to grow its space data services this year and moving forward.

Financial results

The year 2022 saw AAC Clyde Space’s net sales amount to SEK 196.7 million (£15.7m), representing a 9% increase from 2021. According to the company’s CEO, Luis Gomes, it was a positive report amid “industry wide supply chain issues, rising costs, and continued staff shortages”.

Although the company just missed its target of SEK 210 million, it hopes to maintain positive operating cash flow in 2023. However, in the fourth quarter of 2022, net sales amounted to SEK 60.3 million, which is a decrease of 3%.

The year of recovery

During the results meeting, Gomes said 2022 was the year where the company “started seeing a recovery of the market”.

“We have we have actually seen a pickup of the markets towards the end of 2022. And this is showing that many of those projects that have been put on hold by customers during the pandemic are starting to come back,” he continued.

The company signed several new partnerships and extended old ones. It won a contract to continue operating the SeaHawk satellite for another year and began progress on the final phase of the xSPANCION project with ESA and the UK Space Agency to develop a satellite constellation service. Despite one of its satellites on the Virgin Orbit launch being lost, the company said the loss made “no financial impact”.

Future growth for AAC Clyde Space

Looking to the future, AAC Clyde Space hopes to focus on space data as a service to broaden its customers. Gomes explained that while many companies are recognising the benefit of space, they may not want to develop and operate a satellite – thus making space data as a service an increasingly lucrative business offering. The company said:

“AAC Clyde space is in a prime position to develop, deploy and operate constellations of satellites tailored to provide the world with data they require”.

Multiple new satellites will be launching this year and next to provide data for farming and forestry, maritime and energy, and weather and climate.