Parthus is still building its platform for profit

Parthus is still building its platform for profit
By Peter Clarke, EE Times
July 24, 2001 (3:02 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010724S0062

LONDON — Parthus Technologies plc (Dublin, Ireland) made an expected net loss of $8.2 million on revenues of $19.9 million in the first half of 2001.

The loss was expected as the company is recognized as making a transition from being a design services company — in which guise it did much of its contract work with STMicroelectronics — into an intellectual property company that makes money by licensing application-specific design "platforms" and receiving royalties on units that ship based on Parthus technology.

The loss was reduced from $10.2 million for the same period a year earlier, while sales revenue increased 42.5 percent from about $14 million. The company's licensing and royalty revenue for the first half doubled year-on-year to stand at $13 million.

"We are pleased with our first-half results, with licensing and royalty revenues growing at 103 percent year-on-year against the backdrop of a very sharp decline in the s emiconductor industry," said Brian Long, Parthus chief executive officer. "The second quarter of 2001 was our fifth successive quarter as a public company during which we exceeded our targets. We are confident of the underlying strength of our business model and our target of a return to profitability in 2002".

Parthus, a company that is pioneering the application-specific platform approach to system-on-chip design, now offers six platforms aimed at wireless information applications that include hardware architecture and building block components plus software or partnerships with third parties that offer software.

Kevin Fielding, president of Parthus said, "We're on a trajectory that would return us to profitability in the middle of next year. We made a deliberate decision to invest agressively in the R&D base to create an extensive portfolio of platforms. We're now focused on consolidating that effort. We could have tried to remain within a profitable regime, but we decided we needed to be much mor e aggressive in establishing our frachise."