Concurrent revealed a multi-year VOD contract with Charter Communications during its quarterly earnings conference call with analysts.
“We will be providing Charter a comprehensive advanced advertising, data collection and management solution across VOD, linear TV, DVR and interactive TV service platforms. This contract underlines the importance of anonymous, census-level data collection to power new video delivery models, and we believe we are well positioned to address the evolving market going forward,” said Dan Mondor, Concurrent’s president and CEO, according to the transcript of the call provided by Seeking Alpha.
The vendor declined to provide any other details.
Concurrent sees in the Charter contract validation of its three-screen strategy (the company late last year introduced a system designed to get VOD assets to PCs). Three-screen has been identified as a trend, but the company has been waiting for it to progress to the point where service providers start actually buying products that support the capability. Concurrent anticipates that such buying will commence in earnest during the second half of the year.
Mondor said: “We expect our second half revenue will exceed our first half revenue as our core VOD business stabilizes and new three-screen video solutions begin to contribute to the business… Our investment in three-screen video is gaining market acceptance per the objectives of our long-term strategy announced in March 2009.”
He also noted that two North American cable operators, as well as Zon TV in Portugal and a major service provider in the Asia-Pacific region, have adopted Concurrent’s new media data managed services solutions.
Concurrent reported its revenue and earnings were both down in its second quarter. Second-quarter revenue was approximately $15 million, compared with $18.1 million in the prior year’s second quarter. Net income was $89,000, down from a profit of $530,000 in the similar quarter a year ago.
On the positive side, gross margins in Q2 were 62 percent, compared with 59 percent a year ago. Operating expenses were also a bit lower this year – $9.1 million compared with $9.7 million in the prior year’s second quarter.
