Anyone read the Press Release reporting the financials posted at On2 and dated today? Here's an abstract with a couple of interesting items included regarding customers.
We are disappointed that certain customer deployments and the E-world chip port have been pushed out into future quarters and that our lack of control over the process of releasing products caused slower revenue recognition than we anticipated," said Douglas A. McIntyre, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "However, we are very happy with a number of our accomplishments. Among other things, during 2003, On2 signed licensing agreements with Sony, AOL, Electronic Arts, PerfecTV, Stark, Platypus video conferencing using VP6 and Mobilecast. It also licensed the VP6 codec through Quicklink to ABC, the BBC, and the Press Association."
"The company also launched a personal use only license for VP6, which has now driven over 100,000 downloads. During the last year, On2 has entered into arrangements with several companies that give the VP5 and VP6 encoder a level of distribution that the company has not enjoyed before. On2 is now the premier video codec in the Viewpoint player, which has an estimated distribution of 120 million PCs. The On2 family of codecs (VP3, VP5, and VP6) are the premium codecs in the new Nullsoft Winamp 5 player. This product has been downloaded by tens of millions of people. The new AOL Media Player also contains On2's VP5 codec. At the beginning of 2003, we had none of this distribution," Mr. McIntyre concluded.
As previously announced, the company has retained the Navellier Dynamic Opportunities Fund, L.P. to assist the company with corporate advisory and M&A work. The Navellier Dynamic Opportunities Fund, L.P. is part of the Alternative Investment Group at Navellier & Associates and focuses on both public and private investments in the small to mid-cap area. "We are looking for strategically important, accretive transactions to come from our efforts in this arena," said Timothy Reusing, EVP of Business Affairs for On2.
"With the well received launch of VP6.2 and continued positive adoption by developers, our momentum from last year has continued into 2004," said Eric Ameres, On2's EVP of Software Development and CTO. "In the last week we have licensed our software to SecuryCast Oy of Finland for use in a VOD deployment and a large Chinese developer of video surveillance and consumer electronics products and have entered into a binding letter of intent with a Korean company to use our software in an exciting range of video products," Mr. Ameres added.
The company said that in the coming months it plans to launch a VP6 Java player, a Quicktime implementation and add more advanced features for its new newsgathering software.
"We have made some great progress in the last year and a half and we have had some setbacks as well, but on balance I am highly optimistic about 2004 and the years beyond," concluded Mr. McIntyre.
