LAS VEGAS: Omneon has no debt, $34 million in cash on hand and logged a record sales year in 2008 with revenues of $126 million. The withdrawal of the company’s IPO filing last month was not a signal.
“We’re not for sale,” said Geoff Stedman, marketing chief for the 11-year-old Sunnyvale, Calif., server specialist.
Omneon proffered its IPO in December of 2006, hoping to raise $115 million. Then market conditions
Suresh Vasudevan came on as president and CEO in February. He said an IPO could still happen “several quarters” from now, but there’s a fee for each quarterly update that Omneon decided to forego for the time being.
Omneon’s ’08 sales number was 43 percent above 2007, when the company generated $89 million but posted it’s first loss of $2.1 million. Vasudevan said the company posted a pro forma profit for ’08, though no sum was provided. Rather than going public, Omneon is fixing on a strategy to hold fast through the economic downturn.
“Flat,” as one executive put it, “is the new ‘up.’”
With regard to positioning, its eggs are in plenty of baskets. No single customer makes up more than 5 percent of Omneon’s revenues, despite the big get with NBC for the Beijing Olympics. The company was integral in getting the Peacock’s massive collection of content across the Pacific Ocean and onto multiple video platforms. As much as anything, it raised Omneon’s profile in the industry.
It has international diversity as well. Forty-two percent of the company’s business is attributed to the Americas; 41 percent to Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and 17 percent to the Asia-Pacific and Japan region. Operating margin in 2008 was 7 percent; revenue per employee--300 or so--is around $400,000.
Omneon’s NAB news this year represent a shift in strategy of capitalizing on core strengths rather than reaching to far afield. Castify, the Nice, France global file-transfter company Omneon purchased last year for $6.3 million in stock, has been divested in a partnership deal that will continue supporting Omneon’s use of the software. Omneon will continue selling its branded Castify product, ProCast, and the buyer, Aspera of Emeryville, Calif., will service it. The deal is a mutual assist in that Aspera focuses on high-speed file transfer, while Omneon was dipping its toe into those waters. It now receives the support of a specialist, although most likely at a prima fascia write-down. Omneon executives declined to provide the value of the divestiture.
Omneon reinforced its core through an alignment with Pixel Power, the Cambridge, U.K. graphics company. Omneon integrated Pixel Power’s graphics software into its MediaDeck server, rendering the new MediaDeck GX, a multifunction play-out system that can stand as master control for disaster recovery, or for efficient single-channel launches. The MediaDeck, introduced a year ago, remains automation agnostic and is appearing at NAB with several such vendors--Crispin, Nversion, Pebble Beach and Sundance, among them.
For Pixel Power, the alliance represents a way to increase its presence in the United States without the traditional door-knocking, company chief Pete Challinger said.
Omneon also continued its courtship with the post-production market, introducing MediaBridge for migrating content from Avid MediaStream servers to Spectrums or MediaDecks. The software requires no transcoding and transmits at 4x real time, company execs say. Support for other server types will be rolled out down the road. Three new MediaPorts were also added to teh Omneon line to support continued advances in compression technology.
Omneon is exhibiting in the South Upper Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center in Booth No. SU7217. – Deborah D. McAdams
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