SCRI International, Inc.

Routing switchers will grow by over $25 million through 2013

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:09:57 +0000

Routing switchers will grow by over $25 million through 2013. SCRI International reports a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.25% for this product category for the three-year period surveyed. This according to SCRI’s 2012-2013 Broadcast Pro Video Marketplace Reports which track over 20 product types and report on brand shares, key trend and market size & growth, by vertical market (broadcast tv, cable tv, video / film production, post production, corporate and institutional video ( government,educational and medical).

Manufacturers will continue to upgrade and hybridize routing switcher combinations as producers/engineers demand better ways for signal distribution on different standards and data rates. Deflated pricing will dominate the marketplace as more marketers offer routers that accommodate post to live-on-air applications, and hybridized units that contain a smaller footprint for smaller facility matrixes. Flexible, scalable and multi-format will be the catch phrases of marketers as they develop devices that have full-featured functionality, adaptability and miniaturization, at the best price point.

Miranda “Shtum” on Potential Sale

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:47:31 +0000

Miranda reported Q1 revenue of $42.2 million, up 7% from 2011. CEO Seth Goodship did say in the analyst phone conference that Q1 was “softer than expected,” particularly in the US, but that the company is expecting sales to “ramp up” during the year. Several questions abou the impending “strategic review” or sale of the company were answered with the standard company line that the “process is unfolding.” Revenue at Omnibus was not reported separately due to “competitive reasons.” Revenue in the UK while high, was misleading since the UK is the “distribution point” of other regions in Europe. See Miranda Reports First Quarter 2012 Results for details.

Production Switchers Market to grow by over $17 million in 2013

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 03:04:00 +0000

Production Switchers are projected to grow by over $17 million in 2013. This comes in spite of some serious market drops in certain market verticals such as broadcasters. SCRI International reports a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.81% for this product category in all six professional television/video markets for the three-year period. This year, a total of 29.8% of all facilities plan to purchase these devices. That compares favorably to 2011, when 28.7% of all markets purchased production switchers. In 2013, a total of 30.2% of all facilities expect to purchase these switchers. This, according to SCRI’s 2012-2013 Broadcast / Pro Video (B/PVM) Marketplace Report, a series of over 20 annually updated Product Reports, detailing market size, by vertical market, as well as brand share and key trends.

Production switchers have come a long way since their inception. Their compact design and multi-functionality today has made them a much better buy and way to produce broadcast quality programming for even the smallest company. Hybridization and open platform designs accommodate SD, HD, 3D and many other types of programming content for ingest, editing and playout. Full functionality is now the rule with the production of high quality images at the end of the production chain. Durability is also a must with so many remote applications in both broadcast and cable programming.

Spatial constraints are one of the biggest considerations for engineers purchasing production switchers. Remote applications also have driven the need for smaller production devices. Therefore it is not surprising that smaller switchers have 77.8% of the market this year, down from 78.9% in 2011. Large production switchers have 22.2% for 2012, up from 21.1% in 2011.

Smartly designed multi-function production switchers that are durable, portable and compact will be the biggest winners in the future. The shear number of remote applications for sports, news, events, and reality shows demand the kind of functionality that only a hybridized switcher can provide. Producers today want the same kind of versatility they would find in a full production suite in their remote truck or out in the field. Adaptability will be the key to market prominence. The rules will apply to all kinds of ingest, playout and deployment for SD/HD or 3D production. The fully featured hybrid that provides a seamless workflow will bring the best ROI for producers of all levels.

Chyron Q1 Loss — CEO Talks about Industry Consolidation

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:00:47 +0000

Chyron’s Q1 follows the same pattern as reported for Q4 (Chyron Reports Continued Net Loss In Spite of Increased Revenue). Q1 revenue was 7.9 million for Q1 2012 as compared to $6.6 million for Q1 2011; down from Q4 revenue of $8.1 million. Operating loss and pre-tax loss of $1.1 million as compared to an operating loss and pre-tax loss of $0.9 million in Q1 2011. In the analyst phone conference Chyron CEO Michael Wellesley-Wesley responds to a question on the pending sales of Harris by saying that Chyron would go after the Harris Inscriber business and that he expects a lot more consolidation and sale of companies i the industry. Specially he stated that:

There are several broadcast equipment companies that are for sale at the moment and Harris os just one of them. Harris is the latest to join the club. Miranda was put up for sale by its board of directors 4 to 6 weeks ago. If you pay attention to what the new CEO at Sony is saying about the future plans of the company, Broadcast TV is noticeable by its absence. There are quite a number of fairly large broadcast operations in our industry that are for sale. Only fairly recently that Grass Valley was put on the block by Thomson in France and they were ought by private equity firm Fransisco & partners. So there is a lot of change going on in our industry. I expect that there will be a lot of consolidation in this space. This is about a $24 billion a year industry with around 1,600 companies in it and so you have a situation int he broadcast equipment industry where 80% of the revenues are being generated by 30% of the companies. So there are quite a few companies in the industry that are not making adequate returns on their investment and that will be consolidated. I think some of the smaller companies will go the the wall, some will emerge as new champions, and it will be very interesting to see who, if anybody, steps up to the plate to buy these large divisions such as Harris Broadcast.

Harris Pulls the Plug on Broadcast Division

admin — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:20:21 +0000

Harris Corporation reported Q3 results, included in which was a statement indicating that the company has “approved a plan to divest Broadcast Communications. As a result, current and prior period financial results for Broadcast Communications will be reported as discontinued operations beginning with the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012.”

Harris CEO WIlliam Brown stated” “The decision to divest Broadcast Communications resulted from a thorough review of our business portfolio, which determined that the business is no longer aligned with the company’s long-term strategy. The plan to sell these assets supports our disciplined approach to capital allocation, and we intend to use the proceeds to return cash to shareholders and invest in growing our core businesses.”

In the analyst conference call Brown went on to say that “the market outlook for the Broadcast Division is not as promising as once believed.”

Harris Broadcast Division sells a broad line of products that support the entire content delivery chain. The Harris product line includes routers, processors, master control and branding systems, multiviewers, video servers, network monitoring and control, broadcast graphics systems, test and measurement tools and video networking systems. In addition the division provides analog and digital television and radio transmission systems for global broadcast and mobile television applications as well as a range of software solutions for digital asset management, automation and managing the advertising buy/sell delivery chain.

The big question is who will buy the Broadcast Division and by when? The company stated that current and prior period financial results for Broadcast Communications will be reported as discontinued operations beginning with the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012. Bill Brown stated in the conference call that they have “just initiated a process to launch the sale of the broadcast division” and that they expect to sell the division by the end of 2012. In addition, “$20 million of whatever the the proceeds will be, will be used to deploy into share buyback.”

Stay tuned….

Avid Q1 Pro Editors Revenue Down 30%

admin — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 06:34:09 +0000

Avid confirmed the Q1 data released earlier this month (Avid Downward Trend Continues), that overall revenues were lower than a year ago — $152.1 million for the three-month period ended March 31, 2012, compared to $166.3 million for the same period in 2011. The GAAP net loss for the first quarter was $15.6 million, or $0.40 per share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $5.1 million, or $0.13 per share, in the first quarter of 2011.

“Revenues were down from last year primarily related to the creative enthusiast portion of our business”.

In the analyst conference call, CEO Gary Greenfield said that the majority of the “creative enthusiast” segment was related to audio products but that the consumer enthusiast sector experienced double digit declines in Q1 as well, in spite of the favorable reviews for the new Avid Studio App. for the IPad.

In response to a question from an analyst at Piper Jaffrey, Avid execs stated that while Pro Video Editors unit volume is up, revenue for this category is down 30% in Q1. The company expects sometime this year for this category to be greater than fifty percent software based.

Ken Sexton, Avid’s CFO, stated in the call that the company expects 2012 revenue to be “relatively flat” and that the company expects to “trim” its product line. Avid revenue is at its lowest point in years at $678 million, well below that in 2007 of $930 million (see table below).

Avid had earlier this year reported that revenues for 2011 were $677.9 million, compared to revenues of $678.5 million for the same period in 2010. This continues the downward trend in reported annual revenues since 2007.

A comment from the analyst at JP Morgan questioned the company saying that “the stock (Avid) is not showing anything over the last ten years or so and that he is surprised that the company (Avid) is not doing more to get sustainable profitability rather than to just aspire to it”

Avid Annual Revenues

Year Annual $M

2011 677.9

2010 678.5

2009 629.0

2008 844.9

2007 929.6

2006 910.6

Harmonic Q1 Revenue Down, Losses Up

admin — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 05:42:40 +0000

Harmonic Inc. announced that its Q1 net revenue for the first quarter of 2012 was $127.7 million, compared to $132.8 million in the first quarter of 2011. As previously announced, net revenue for the first quarter of 2012 was adversely impacted by an unexpectedly slow order rate in the early part of the quarter and a decline in demand from European customers throughout the quarter.

The Company reported a GAAP net loss for the first quarter of 2012 of $7.5 million, or ($0.06) per share, compared to GAAP net income of $0.5 million, or $0.00 per share, for the first quarter of 2011.

“We got off to an unusually slow start in the first quarter and our European business remained soft throughout the quarter, but our bookings growth in other geographies underscores the fundamental strength of our business,” said Patrick Harshman, president and chief executive officer.

“While we have uncertain near-term visibility regarding our European business, we continue to expect sequential growth in the second quarter and believe that the global proliferation of video content and media outlets, along with increasing demand for higher quality video in every format delivered over bandwidth constrained networks, plays to our core strengths.”

Harmonic anticipates net revenue in a range of $130 million to $140 million for the second quarter of 2012. GAAP gross margins and operating expenses for the second quarter of 2012 are expected to be in the range of 44% to 46% and $62 million to $63 million, respectively.

Avid Downward Trend Continues — discussion

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:30:38 +0000

A interesting discussion of SCRI’s article earlier this month can be found on Creative Cow.Net at: SCRI International – Avid Downward Trend Continues

Apple Posts Continued Growth in Q2

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:22:52 +0000

Apple announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 second quarter ended March 31, 2012. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $39.2 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $24.7 billion and net profit of $6.0 billion, or $6.40 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 47.4 percent compared to 41.4 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 64 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The Company sold 35.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.8 million iPads during the quarter, a 151 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4 million Macs during the quarter, a 7 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.7 million iPods, a 15 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“We’re thrilled with sales of over 35 million iPhones and almost 12 million iPads in the March quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The new iPad is off to a great start, and across the year you’re going to see a lot more of the kind of innovation that only Apple can deliver.”

“Our record March quarter results drove $14 billion in cash flow from operations,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter, we expect revenue of about $34 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $8.68.”

Apple continues to dominate the Broadcast/ Pro Video NLE market, with FCPX making good inroads, in spite of early protests by high end users about the demise of FCP7. Since then Apple has introduced upgrades with features lacking in the original version of X and has gone a long way to reassuring broadcast & pro video users of the company’s commitment to this marketplace.

Pixelworks Q1 Revenue Decline

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:15:45 +0000

Pixelworks, Inc. , a provider of video and pixel processing technology, reported that first quarter 2012 revenue was $14.3 million, compared to $16.8 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2011 and $14.7 million in the first quarter of 2011. The sequential decrease was primarily driven by expected weaker demand in the digital projection and advanced TV markets, partially offset by licensing revenue recorded during the quarter.

“Despite the challenges of seasonality compounded by supply disruptions and an industry-wide inventory correction, we were able to exceed our guidance for Q1 2012,” said Bruce Walicek, President and CEO of Pixelworks