Consolidation in the digital TV market, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, pushed the Kudelski Group into a first half loss. The Swiss security company also felt the negative impact of the weakness in the US dollar.
The company reported a first half operating loss of CHF 18.5 million (€11.48m) and a net loss of CHF 39.8 million. However, the company is forecasting a return to profitability in the second half, and is looking ahead to 2009 when the full benefits of its new service model will kick in.
The Digital TV segment generated sales of CHF 268.6 million, a 4.2% decrease on the first half of 2007. Kudelski now has 92.3 million active devices for conditional access. Although Kudelski gained new business from customers such as Portugal Telecom and existing clients UPC and Virgin Media grew their business, East European operators that had more than doubled in 2007 went into a consolidation phase.
As previously reported by Broadband TV News, Kabel Deutschland has selected Nagravision conditional access for future commercial deployments, adding to renewals with Canal+, which included the protection of Canal’s new USB device that offers 18 DTT channels on the PC.
