Kudelski Group to acquire EmbedICs, Inc.

Friday, February 8th, 2008
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  • Strengthening delivery of state-of-the-art security solutions and reverse engineering defense
  • EmbedICs firmware and designs already deployed in set-top boxes

Cheseaux, Switzerland — The Kudelski Group (SWX Swiss Exchange: KUD) today announces its agreement to acquire EmbedICs, Inc. EmbedICs, Inc. is a US-based embedded software, cryptography and fabless semiconductor design firm delivering state-of-the-art security solutions for the Digital TV market. EmbedICs has successfully developed customized security solutions for several Fortune 500 companies. Their customers have been extremely satisfied with the quality of their work and their responsiveness. Recent projects included the development of: system level requirements definition, secure ASICs and embedded firmware design, continuously available secure database services and critical personalization and manufacturing infrastructure to support a US-wide security initiative.

André Kudelski, Chairman & CEO of the Kudelski Group, says: “This acquisition will add value to our innovation capability, our security know-how and also allow market expansion, as well as increasing the know-how of our people. It strengthens the Kudelski Group’s ability to deliver state-of-the-art technology solutions to the digital pay TV market by increasing system security knowledge and diversification as well as reverse engineering defense to make our products even safer. As EmbedICs is strongly positioned in the US cable market, it will also allow us to expand our presence there.” He continued: “We welcome our colleagues from EmbedICs and will together deliver even more value to our customers.”

PolyCipher, a joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications, is developing a next generation Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS) – a new security architecture that enables the download of renewable security clients to cable-ready devices, in order to safeguard video, audio and other content delivered over cable networks. EmbedICs, Inc helped to specify the system level requirements and messaging protocol and also developed security elements and production and operational support infrastructure that are critical to the deployment of DCAS.

The parties anticipate that the acquisition will close in the next 30 days.