Pilat pays for Fox-ache

A bust-up with Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television Stations cost media software house Pilat Global Media dear last year, tipping it into the red.

Revenues were up 3% from £21.9m to £22.5m, with the company seeing faster growth in in the higher margin revenue streams - licence and maintenance fees - which grew by 7% and 5.6%, respectively. Recurring maintenance fees continue to grow steadily and are now 26% of the total revenues, the company revealed.

However, after three successive quarters of year-on-year revenue growth, fourth quarter revenues were flat at £6.2m.

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The operating profit (before amortisation of intangible assets and impairment of receivables) in 2011 was £2.4m, representing 10.7% of revenues, compared with £3.2m or 14.7% in 2010.

A legal dust-up with News Corporation's Fox Television Networks was settled out of court and resulted in Pilat receiving £0.5m. However, Fox has stopped using Pilat's Integrated Broadcast Management System (IBMS), resulting in a loss of outstanding receivable balances from Fox, prompting a £2.3m write-down by Pilat. As a result, the previous year's profit of £2.2m turned to a loss of £0.97m last year.

Michael Rosenberg, Chairman of Pilat Media Global, said: "We are pleased that revenues increased to their highest ever level despite the uncertainty in the market that causes some projects to be delayed. As expected cash continued to increase as we completed a number of implementations and cash, net of loans, is also at an all time high of £6.67m.

In 2011 more resources were allocated to research and development, with spending increased by 11.5% to £2.9m (2010: £2.6m).

Earnings per share fell from 2.78p to -1.44p. No dividend was proposed.

The share price fell 3.1% to 30.50p.

NR