A small gain in revenue as Vitesse shifts product strategy
Revenue at Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. inched up in the publicly traded company’s annual earnings report, released today.
The Camarillo-based firm recorded revenue of $108.5 million, slightly up from $103.8 million the year before. In 2012, the firm brought it $119,483, and $140,967 the year before that.
Its stock, meanwhile, notched stockholders at $0.03 loss.
The bright spots emerged from the company’s growth in product revenue — up 73 percent year-over-year.
Vitesse is still hoping to profit from the Internet of things, the concept that many electronic devices in daily life — whether a thermostat, a refrigerator or a car — will be able to talk to one another the same way that computers, phones and tablets do today.
“We are very pleased with the success of Vitesse’s ‘Ethernet Everywhere’ strategy, and our execution is increasingly evident as demonstrated by our revenue growth, the upward trend in gross margins, design win success, and now, achieving non-[generally accepted accounting principals] operating profitability,” Vitesse CEO Chris Gardner said.
In the filing, the company said it would focus its research and development, as well as sales and marketing efforts, on its Ethernet technologies that can integrate with products for the Internet of things, edge networks and cloud storage. That market, however, is highly competitive, and Vitesse will need to prove it can rapidly adapt to technological and design advances.
Encouragingly, 49.6 percent of Vitesse’s product revenue came from its Ethernet segment in the fourth quarter of 2014. And for the year, 10.9 percent of its product revenue came from industrial Internet of things networking products, almost double the 5.4 percent that sector brought in the previous year.
In June, the company netted $26.7 million in capital by selling 8.6 million shares in a move to reduce debt. The sold-out offering was Vitesse’s third stock offering in 18 months. The cash infusion was “really an important milestone to put our debt issues behind us after working at this for years,” Gardner told the Business Times in June.
Shares of the company’s stock were trading 4.19 percent up in after-hours trading on Dec. 4, climbing $0.13 to $3.23.
