Open TV’s turnaround

Middleware company Open TV’s stock price closed at $1.84 on Friday evening, down 10 cents on the previous day’s close but significantly ahead of the miserable situation six months ago when it was trading as low as $1. The quite remarkable turnaround was highlighted by CEO Ben Bennett during the company’s latest quarterly and half-yearly results, and helped by its disposal of most of its holdings in loss-making Static 2358.
Revenues for Q2 were up 17% on last year, while last year’s losses have been turned at long last into profits ($2.5m for Q2, vs a $1m loss in 2007).

Bennett said: “We have continued to grow our global middleware market share as we work to deepen relationships with existing customers as well as acquire new customers and enter new markets including a recent significant customer win in Japan. On the advanced advertising side, our EclipsePlus product is beginning to be deployed by leading operators. Overall, we are on track with our plans for the year.”

Open TV, founded back in 1994, is majority owned by the Kudelski Group. Bennett reminded investors of OpenTV’s business wins over the past few months, including its adoption by Foxtel (on the Foxtel iQ2 platform, which is an advanced, quad-tuner, high-definition, PVR- enabled set-top box running on OpenTV Core2); an important deal with NBC Universal which has selected the OpenTV Participate solution to “power, centralize and manage cross-platform interactive television applications, including Web, mobile and set-top box, for NBC Universal’s broadcast and cable networks”; the increased availability launch of OpenTV EclipsePlus, the company’s “next generation” campaign management solution, which provides advanced traffic and billing features to cable networks; and winning business from Brazil’s Net Serviços de Comunicaçăo S.A., the largest cable operator in Latin America.

That’s all good news. On the negative side a former CEO at OpenTV – and they’ve had a few – Alan Guggenheim, who left the company in August last year, is claiming that OpenTV hasn’t paid him his severance pay. Guggenheim filed a complaint alleging that he had been fired after whistleblowing on illegal and/or unethical behaviour at the San Francisco-based company. OpenTV denies any wrongdoing.