ANT says revenues will be lower, losses wider this year; but medium term outlook positive
ANT plc today forecast lower revenues and a significantly greater loss for 2007 than it said it had previously expected.
The Board said in a statement to the Stock Exchange that it has taken steps to alleviate the situation by reducing the company's cost base in the second half of the year.
The Cambridge-based company also said that good progress continues to be made in executing the agreement signed with Scientific Atlanta announced in September 2006 and, as a result, its relationship with SA and its parent company Cisco, is strengthening and broadening.
ANT is now fully established as the SA TV Operator Service Platform provider of choice and is actively working with them in support of their IPTV plans world-wide. This in turn has led to further opportunities to licence technology to other parts of Cisco.
“However, within the rest of our customer base the roll out of IPTV technology is not accelerating as fast as we had expected and it is now likely that unit shipments of ANT enabled devices for the whole of 2007 will be approximately the same as last year,” the company said.
Also, the numbers of new licences signed is likely to be lower than usual, particularly in the first half, as customers wait to see progress in deployment of IPTV before taking out further licences for ANT’s next generation Galio browser and client technologies.
Whilst this impact on both licence and royalty revenues in 2007, is expected to be partially offset by significant service income, the Board now believes that revenues are unlikely to exceed the level achieved last year.
The range of value add solutions and applications that ANT has developed, now goes well beyond that of the IPTV market and is being extended across a wider digital media market and , as a consequence, the Board said it remains confident in the company's medium to longer term prospects.
15th June 2007
