Kudelski releases 2016 results

The Kudelski Group Annual Results 2016

CHESEAUX, Switzerland, and PHOENIX (AZ), USA — The Kudelski Group (SIX: KUD.S), the world leader in digital security, announced today its 2016 annual results.

Consolidating The Customer Footprint With Major Operators And Introducing Disruptive Innovation

In iDTV, the most significant players in the industry have extended their partnerships with the Group, using some of the most innovative solutions:

• Altice USA, the fourth largest U.S. cable operator, selected NAGRA’s content protection solution and multiscreen platform to launch its new 4K Ultra HD cable service, which enables an all-screen connected home environment. Altice USA provides digital cable TV and high-speed Internet, voice, WiFi and data products and services to more than 4.6 million customers across 20 states;
• NAGRA and Groupe Canal+ signed a multi-year framework agreement to secure Groupe Canal+ content in its subsidiaries (France, Poland, Caribbean, Africa, Vietnam, Madagascar and Mauritius), and deploy the NAGRA Insight analytics solution;
• In the United States, the deployment of NAGRA COMMAND content access at DISH is well under way with approximately 1.2 million total devices delivered since the inception of the project, including 800,000 devices in 2016;
• In Brazil, during the 2016 Olympics, NET was able to offer its customers 56 different channels of Olympic content, a robust line-up of content that beat the competition. This was achieved thanks to NAGRA’s integration of 40 channels over IP into the current broadcast channel environment.

The Group added to its portfolio a number of new disruptive solutions, including:

• NexGuard (formerly Civolution), a highly-secured watermarking technology for content delivered to any device;
• TVKey, a USB dongle allowing consumers to enjoy pay-TV services directly on new generation smart TVs. This solution was developed in partnership with Samsung and MStar and has been deployed at Skylife and HD+;
• Insight, a one-stop shop platform for analytics that taps into a large number of data sources in order to create innovative ways to improve the business of content distribution;
• CAST Dongle, an HDMI-based module that allows Over-the-Top and IPTV service providers to move the mobile experience to the TV screen with a simple swipe.

NAGRA has also regrouped its entire portfolio of User Experience solutions as part of the OpenTV Suite, which will allow deeper integration with customers. The OpenTV Suite encompasses the operating system, the player, the user interface and the service platform.

Growth With New And Existing Customers

• In South Africa, Sentech partnered with NAGRA to launch its Satellite Gap Filler program in order to bring service to areas not covered by its DTT network. In the same market, Platco, Africa’s fastest-growing DTH operator, switched from competition to NAGRA’s cardless security technology for its new Openview HD service offering, which was successfully launched in November 2016;
• In Brazil, SatHD Regional’s distribution of Globo’s content countrywide saw substantial growth in 2016, more than doubling its user base using NAGRA’s system;
• With the recent momentum of cable digitization in India, NAGRA crossed the 10 million digital cable subscriber milestone in less than five years, which is a significant achievement;
• The Taiwanese cable market continued to show strong growth with more than 5.5 million subscribers using NAGRA solutions. Taiwan Broadband Cable shipped close to one million OpenTV5 set-top boxes, making it one of the largest OpenTV5 deployments in Asia.

In 2016, Conax demonstrated continued strength by concluding 11 new customer contracts, encompassing 6 broadcast operations, 2 contracts for advanced services and contracts with 3 operators to deploy Conax’s new cloud services platform. These comprise a variety of operators from Europe, Latin America and India. Conax also signed 20 additional contracts with existing customers for advanced services, cloud services, cardless technology and more.