TeleAtlas Earnings - 17% increase in Revenue

location based services

On the heels of their Competitor NAVTEQ's announcement of an 11% revenue growth, Teleatlas has released improved earnings for the second quarter, of 60 Million Euros, a 17% increase compared to the second quarter a year ago. Profit swung from a loss of 1.3 Million Euros to a positive 4.5 Million Euros. The big push was from a strong 81% revenue growth in the personal navigation segment, no doubt powered by some of its big customers like TomTom and Cobra. They are also seeing strong interest in their Developers Link program that attracts developers to help them program and find uses for their mapping data. This will help them offer more to their customers in the future.
Alain De Taeye, Chief Executive Officer, says:” The rapid expansion of the portable navigation market and the steady introduction of new wireless applications are strong indicators that the use of digital maps will only continue to grow. We’re particularly pleased to see increasing activity in the wireless market. With our recent win TeleNav, and with hundreds of wireless application developers now in our DeveloperLink program, Tele Atlas is well positioned to be at the forefront of emerging digital map markets worldwide.”
More details on their businessIn the second quarter of 2006 commercial agreements with Pioneer and AvMaps, an Italian application provider, were renewed and Location Based Service application developer TeleNav was added a new partner in the wireless segment.
Tele Atlas significantly expanded its coverage in Eastern Europe with increases in coverage in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Significant coverage expansion has also been realized in Poland and Russia as well as Northern Ireland and Portugal. In addition the European product portfolio was expanded with the initial release of a digital terrain elevation product for all of Europe.
In the Asia Pacific region we have entered into a binding agreement to create a joint venture that will acquire the mapping business of PT NavIndo in Indonesia. Under this transaction Tele Atlas will pay approximately €1 million for 75% of this business. Additionally we are currently restructuring our existing Chinese joint venture with plans to significantly expand our presence in China.
The quarter also marked the release of a first version of the integrated North America database to non-navigation customers and to certain key navigation customers for testing purposes. Late in the quarter we made an additional release to key navigation customers for incorporation in their products.
During the quarter, Tele Atlas obtained recertification in Europe to the ISO TS 16949 and in North America to the ISO 9001 standards and continues to be the only digital mapping company to have world-wide ISO certification. The DeveloperLink™ program was launched successfully. It provides free Tele Atlas data and tools to application developers. Currently more than 300 developers are using the program to develop new wireless and personal navigation applications.