This morning, following the example of the other navigational market players, Tele Atlas has announced a record third-quarter turnover. The Belgian company, which supplies maps to TomTom, Mio, Navman and ViaMichelin earned ¤ 65 million between July and September. That is an increase of 29% compared with the same period last year.Nonetheless, Tele Atlas made a nett loss of ¤ 17.8 million this last quarter. That is an increase of 80% compared with the loss of 9.8 million in the third quarter of last year. Tele Atlas lays the blame for this increase on the increase in investments they have made to help expand their activities in China. The operational loss of the company in this quarter was only half that of a year ago: ¤ 5.3 million between June and September, compared to ¤ 10.3 million in the same period in 2005.
Excellent
Hardie Morgan, Chief Financial Officer at Tele Atlas is very pleased with these figures: "We've just ended an excellent third quarter and we're well on our way towards reaching our turnover goal for this year. There is a growing demand for our products, and we are are confident that the base for future growth is becoming more and more firm". The previously announced financial forecasts are confirmed. Tele Atlas is expecting a total turnover of ¤ 250 million for 2006, and an operational loss of ¤ 33 million. For the longer term, Tele Atlas expects an annual turnover growth of 20%.Culmination
So the Belgian company is very pleased with the third quarter of 2006. Tele Atlas has experienced several successes in this period. New contracts were signed with Nokia (for map material for their N95), Hewlett-Packard and Research in Motion (maps for the BlackBerry Pearl). These agreements give Tele Atlas a lot of long-term growth potential.Tele Atlas also benefited from the explosive growth of the Personal Navigation Devices market. Compared to the third quarter of 2005, the Belgians gained 81% more turnover in this market segment, thanks to no less than 2 million PND devices being sold with Tele Atlas maps on them. Tele Atlas is the preferred supplier to TomTom, and that is where the lion's share of the earnings are coming from.
The PND market is currently the only segment where Tele Atlas has grown. In the 'Automotive Navigation' (built-in navigational systems), 'Enterprise and Government' and 'Internet/Wireless' segments, the turnover remained constant or even decreased.
Maps
Tele Atlas is currently busy at improving the quality and coverage of it's map material. The growth-market in China receives a lot of attention from the company for this reason. Tele Atlas is working very closely with multiple Chinese companies in an effort to chart the entire country. Currently all 337 cities in China have been mapped with approval of the local government.Within Europe, detailed information for Ireland and North-Ireland has been added to the database. With this, 7.8 million kilometres of the European road grid has now been mapped. 90% of all European addresses can now be found in Tele Atlas' database, which contains all the roads of more than 40 countries at the moment.
