U.K. STB-maker Amino sees revenue, sales gains in H1

U.K.-based set-top box manufacturer Amino Technologies hit some rough road in the first six months of the year, reporting an operating loss of $1.5 million, an improvement from a loss of $5.6 million in the first six months of 2009, despite seeing a revenues increase of 41 percent to $28.2 million from the same period a year ago.

But, the company said its core IPTV business saw MPEG-4 shipments make up 79 percent of its overall shipments, adding that they were up 325 percent over the previous year.

The launch of new products has helped the company gain increasing traction in both its traditional IPTV and the emerging hybrid/OTT markets.

Amino said higher component costs, and reduced margins on large sales to Tier 2 operators contributed to the loss.

"This has been an encouraging H1 performance, with record booked unit sales, that builds on the momentum from the second half of the previous year," said Keith Todd, non-executive chairman. "Profitability has been impacted by foreign exchange movements, higher component prices and the adjustment of margins as the company scales into tier 1 and tier 2 markets, where important new contracts have been secured during the period."

Todd said it had an order book of 250,000 units, representing $32.7 million in revenues, giving Amino strong revenues for the remainder of the year. He said Amino, expected production cost improvements and supply chain efficiencies to have a positive influence in 2011.

"The combination of a healthy H2 order book, improving market conditions and a new product portfolio provide confidence we are in line with management forecasts for the full year," he said.

Amino, which specializes in digital entertainment solutions for IPTV, Internet TV and in-home multimedia distribution, had a number of important contract wins in the Tier 2 IPTV market in Europe and South America, and says they're evidence of the company's ability to scale its operations to meet the demands of major operators.

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