Avid Technology Inc. has reported total revenues for Q3 at $231.2 million for the three-month period ending Sept. 30, up 13 percent, compared to $204.4 million for the same period in 2005. The company said its professional video business performed well, as more and more broadcasters are upgrading to HD.
"Our professional video business had a solid quarter, with record broadcast bookings driving a 23 percent sequential increase in that segment's backlog, and healthy demand for our HD-enabled, post-production solutions yielding growth in our post business," said David Krall, Avid's president and CEO.
Avid's total earnings for the quarter totaled $3.5 million, or 8 cents per share, compared to a loss of $17.8 million, or 46 cents per share for the same period last year.
The net income loss in the third quarter of 2006 includes $14.3 million of non-cash charges for research and development, stock-based compensation, restructuring and related tax adjustments, compared to $42 million for the third quarter of 2005.
Gross profit margin for the company was down 48.4 percent as compared to 52.3 percent the same period the year before. Avid's video gross margins were "stable," while audio and consumer gross margins declined from Q2. Video bookings are up, but weren't reflected in the Q3 results due to recognition timing. The company said in a conference call that the deals are increasing in size and those currently in the pipeline might even extend beyond 2007.
"As previously announced, we had a slowdown in demand at quarter-end for Digidesign's Pro Tools|HD systems. Now that many of the best-selling third-party Pro Tools plug-ins have been ported to the Intel-based Mac platform, we expect Pro Tools|HD demand to improve in Q4," Krall said. "We've also addressed the stability issue with Pinnacle Studio 10, and are now focusing our development efforts on an upcoming release of Pinnacle Studio for the new Windows Vista operating system."
