Pace preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2013

Tuesday, March 4th, 2014
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SALTAIRE, UK — Pace plc (LSE: PIC), a leading global developer of technologies and products for Pay TV and broadband service providers, today announces its results for the year ended 31 December 2013.

Pay TV hardware leadership

Pace was reconfirmed as the market leader in Pay TV hardware; global number one in Set-top boxes, Media Servers and Telco Gateways:

  • STB and Media Server revenues were up 8.4% to $1,979.6m in 2013 (2012: $1,826.0m), driven largely by the high demand for Media Servers in H1 2013 in North America and a number of new deployments in H2 2013.
  • The move to Media Servers and whole home solutions is continuing at speed across the globe. Demand from customers in North America was strong with Media Servers now comprising over 28% of shipments in that market (2012: 14%). In the year, Pace announced a number of Media Server wins beyond North America, with the first international deployment at Get TV in Norway and further deployments planned in 2014 including Liberty Global, and Foxtel. We have a strong Media Server pipeline and anticipate increased demand across the globe in 2014 and beyond.
  • IPTV is a segment in which Pace has previously been under-represented. In 2013, Pace began shipping Mediaroom enabled Digital Video Recorders (“DVRs”) and STBs to AT&T and CenturyLink, two of the largest telecommunications providers in North America, and Telefonica in Brazil and Chile.
  • Demand for traditional STBs remains strong; in the year, Pace achieved next generation hardware wins at a number of longstanding tier one customers and announced a multi-product deal with Charter Communications, a major cable operator in North America that Pace had not previously supplied product to.
  • Gateway revenues were down 19.9% to $375.8m in 2013 (2012: $469.4m) as the impact of expected dual sourcing at a major customer was only partially offset by new wins at customers such as GVT and MTS.

Widen Out in Software, Services and Integrated Solutions

Pace achieved a number of key wins and deployments across all areas of our Software and Services offerings and we have a strong pipeline into 2014. Revenues in this area increased 5.4% to $113.8m in 2013 (2012: $108.0m).

  • The Pace Elements software platform continues to gain significant traction as part of an advanced integrated solution with a number of wins in the year, deliveries underway for wins achieved in 2013 at Foxtel and other customers, and deployments at customers such as Telefonica Vivo, Sky New Zealand, Altibox, and Elisa. The Elements platform is currently being used by over 3.3m subscribers.
  • Pace Elements is also a key part of our integrated solutions for emerging markets; we have a number of operators deployed with this solution (Pace hardware, software and Latens Conditional Access System (“CAS”)) in India and have an encouraging pipeline in Southern Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and CIS.
  • The Pace ECO Service Management Suite continues to evolve with a number of new modules launched in the year to provide increased functionality and wins at customers such as Telstra, Telmex and Bell Aliant. These wins build on a strong global customer footprint that includes AT&T and BSkyB. The ECO platform is currently supporting our customers to manage over 30m devices across the world.
  • The Latens software-based CAS and Digital Rights Management (“DRM”) business made good headway, with a 52% growth in the number of subscribers the product is deployed to in 2013, on both Pace and other vendors’ hardware and wins at a number of customers including Telenet.