Nagra announces 2013 half year results

CHESEAUX, Switzerland — The Kudelski Group (SIX: KUD.S), the world’s leading provider of media content protection and value-added service technology, announced today its 2013 half year results.

While the European crisis and weak consumer sentiment continued to affect the European Digital TV business, the American Digital TV business posted a 12.1% growth. Both the South American and the North American markets contributed to the strong regional performance. In North America, a large number of new smart cards delivered to Dish Network underpinned the top line, while a further expansion of Group’s footprint in South America enabled continued strong performance in that region.

Nagra’s footprint continues to expand with the win of Racsa, the largest Costa Rican telecom company, selecting Nagra’s hosted Medialive multiscreen over-the-top service.

Furthermore, Telefónica’s middleware roll-out is progressing according to plan, with the deployment of OpenTV5 starting in Chile. Telefonica Chile also starts leveraging SmarDTV’s highly cost optimized and pre-integrated set-top boxes.

Stream of new wins in Asian Digital TV Market

In the Chinese market, the Group is in the process of deploying its Video on Demand solution suite in the first of eight cities in the Guangdong province. Moreover, the Group entered into an agreement with Shandong Cable, one of the largest cable operators in the world, for the deployment of Nagra CAS and is starting head-end deployments in 17 cities of the Shandong province as of this fall.

Nagra continues to extend its leadership in the Taiwanese market, with NanKuo cable selecting the latest generation Nagra CAS.

In Mongolia, Sansar Cable and DDishTV selected a complete pre-integrated Nagra solution consisting of Nagra CAS, SmarDTV devices and OpenTV middleware for their cable and satellite networks.

Following a strong 2012 with the deployment of over a million iDecode-based devices with embedded security, Nagra continues to expand its footprint in the Indian digital cable market, entering into an agreement with GTPL. GTPL, a large cable operator in western India formerly using a third party CAS system, is initially deploying Nagra CAS on 700,000 digital set-top boxes.

Internet TV gaining traction

The Group Internet TV solutions continue to progress steadily. In the US, the Group further extended the scope of its partnership with Dish Network, supporting Dish’s streaming and side-loading services with the Nagra PRM solution. The supported streaming service allows content streaming from a home gateway to mobile devices, using Echostar’s Sling technology, while side loading allows the transfer of content to mobile devices, with Nagra providing the security functionality for both services.

As a foundation for the continuous evolution of their content portfolio including the recent launch of BT Sport, British Telecom are protecting their IP multicast TV service with Nagra integrated CAS.

In the French market, Nagra is expanding the scope of its security portfolio with Canal+ Group. Canal selected Nagra secure media player supporting a broad range of open devices.

Nagra Persistent Rights Management solution is also gaining traction with broadcasters. HBO Europe’s popular over-the-top service will be protected by Nagra’s PRM on connected TVs, PCs, smart phones and tablets in Central and Eastern Europe.