Espial Group spikes after posting Q1 profit

Shares of Espial (TSX:ESP) are racing today after the company released its Q1, 2014 results. The company earned $1.02-million on revenue of $5-million, double the topline from the same period last year, and a reversal of last year’s Q1 loss of $2.4-million.

CEO Jaison Dolvane characterized the quarter.

“We had a strong start to fiscal 2014. In the first quarter, we saw solid set-top box and Smart TV deployments, and new project wins from both our service provider and consumer electronic customers,” he said. “Cable operators are looking to adopt open, cloud-based solutions like RDK and HTML5, so they can achieve rapid service innovation and deliver rich user experiences. In line with our strategy, we continue to gain the attention of major cable operators worldwide and made good progress developing our sales pipeline in the first quarter. We are very pleased with our recent quarterly results and believe we remain well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities ahead.”

Founded in 1997, Ottawa-based Espial designs and sells TV software and software services. Its platforms facilitate IPTV video services such as video-on-demand and TV web browsing.

The upbeat numbers from Espial follow on a number of recent contract wins, including a multi-year agreement with an unnamed tier-one North American cable operator to provide an “out-of-the-box HTML5 user experience for TV, tablets and smart phones,” announced last October. At the time, Global Maxfin Capital analyst Ralph Garcea estimated the contract, which was Espial’s largest ever, could be worth $15 to $20-million over the next three to five years, with an incremental $2-3 million in recurring maintenance revenue.

At press time, shares of Espial were up 18.6% to $2.04.

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