Posted on Tuesday, February 09 2016 @ 12:59 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Imagination Technologies CEO Hossein Yassaie
is stepping down with immediate effect, after serving as CEO since 1998. Andrew Heath, one of the non-executive directors, has been appointed Interim Chief Executive. The group is going through financial issues, it isued a trading update that it expects to report an EBIT loss for the fiscal year ending 30 April 2016. The company also announced several restructuring initiatives.
Since the Group published its half year results in December 2015, market conditions have not improved and the slow-down in the overall semiconductor sector has continued, reinforced by global uncertainty about future trading prospects with China.
Royalty returns from some key customers have fallen short of previous expectations for the last calendar quarter of 2015 with lower forecasts for the first calendar quarter of 2016. While the licence pipeline remains strong, and licences and related revenues already secured this year amount to £24 million, the pace of deal closure is falling short of prior expectations.
The royalty reduction coupled with continuing uncertainty over licence revenue timing is likely to result in a material reduction in expected FY16 revenues and resulting profitability. The Group now expects to report an EBIT loss for the financial year to 30 April 2016.
The Group continues to have sufficient cash resources to meet its obligations going forward.
Imagination is best known for its line of PowerVR graphics chips, which are found in a wide variety of SoCs used in many portable devices, including Apple's iPhone and iPad lineups.
