Imagination lights the gloom with strong first half

Imagination Technologies has reported a strong jump in revenues up 27% to £71.4m for the six months to the end of October.

“We remain confident of our continued good progress given the growing demand across our IP (intellectual property) families, the growth in design wins across a widening range of end user markets and the momentum in our partners’ chip volume,” said Hossein Yassaie, Imagination’s chief executive.

“On average around 1.5 million devices are now being shipped with our IP daily, despite the global economic environment,” said Yassaie.

Revenues from IP royalties increased by 66% to £39.1m.

New IP licences brought in £17.8m.

“An increasingly diverse range of product shipments, across our many partners and in all regions, have resulted in more than 90% growth in unit shipments to 237 million for the first half – ahead of our target,” said Yassaie.

“We now expect the full year unit shipments to be close to the 500 million unit mark,”said Yassaie.

And revenues from the Pure digital radio consumer business improved by 6% to £14.1m.

“Whilst the tight economic environment is as expected impacting Pure’s performance in the short-term, we anticipate seeing a financial improvement in this division over the medium term, driven by new product opportunities and international markets,” said Yassaie.

The company is currently in a takeover battle for the MIPS Technology microprocessor business. This week it raised its bid for the US comapny to $80m.

During the period Imagination signed new and extended agreements with existing partners including Allwinner, Greenplug, MediaTek, Realtek, Renesas, TI, Toumaz.

New license partners included Entropic, Ineda and Socle.