CSR reports strong finish to 07, but the market is unimpressed
CSR plc (CSR.L), wireless specialists and leaders in Bluetooth technology, reported flat pre-tax profits at $155.6m for the year ended 28 December on revenue that increased 20% to $848.6m.
It also said that the loss of market share would affect this year, and this may have been a contributor to the 19% slide in its share price in morning trading, despite the company expressing confidence in its ability to recover next year. It is now valued around £460m.
CEO Joep van Beurden (pictured) said: “CSR has ended 2007 with a strong fourth quarter, delivering year on year revenue growth in line with expectations.
“We enter 2008 with strong market share, a leading position in all segments and a pipeline of innovative new products such as MusiCore that are on-track and exciting in their potential.
“We have previously acknowledged that there would be a loss of market share in one top tier phone OEM which would affect 2008. We have already taken steps to address this and expect to recover this share in 2009. In all our other segments, we are confident of broadly maintaining market share during this year. We have also made good progress at another top tier phone OEM who we have not previously supplied.
“All of this reinforces our confidence in our long-term outlook.”
“For the short-term, we are fully aware of the current economic climate and consumer sentiment. We are seeing a run-down in customer inventory levels, particularly in China, and customer caution on their own sales outlook. For these reasons, we believe the first half revenues for 2008 will be broadly flat against last year; but the visible pipeline of new product introductions leads us to expect modest year-on-year revenue growth in the second half of this year.
“Our plans for the longer term, specifically our ambition to grow our revenue to $2 billion by 2012, will be the product of an operational assessment that I am conducting at this moment. I will be sharing the results with the market in the spring."
CSR said it is now regularly ship more than one million chips a day and has the infrastructure in place to ship considerably more.
28 February 2008
