Satellite and internet services are selling so fast that Hughes Electronics Corp’s earnings could reach $3 a share by 2003, chairman Michael Smith has told the Bloomberg Forum. Last year Hughes made $1.18 per share for its investors. A publicly traded division of General Motors, Hughes has lost its defense operations to Raytheon Co and its automotive electronics to the Delphi Automotive Systems unit of GM over the past few years. As the only major technology left on board, satellites are now central to the Hughes’ future. Maybe not for much longer. Surprisingly, Smith said he expects revenues from the DirecTV satellite service and DirecPC internet service to overtake satellite manufacture and aerospace revenues. Satellite manufacture still accounts for 50% or more of the business Hughes does, but services are fast catching up. The number of DirecTV customers in the US has reached 4 million, with another half a million in Japan and Latin America. Each customer pays around $30 a month for their subscription, which by our calculations comes to more than $1.6bn a year.
