F-Secure Group’s financial results January 1 – September 30, 2003
For the third quarter of 2003, F-Secure reported revenues of 10.1 million euros with positive operating result amounting to 0.8 m. The operating result improved remarkably compared to last year’s corresponding result of EUR 0.3 million negative.
The result represents an increase of 11% from the previous quarter and 5% from the third quarter of 2002. The company’s antivirus business achieved the industry’s fastest growth rate in Europe during Q3 with a y-to-y growth rate of over 40%.
The anti-virus revenues grew strongly, by 32% in the third quarter and by 15% in the first nine months of 2003. The number of anti-virus service subscriptions continued to show excellent growth and related revenues grew by 153% in the third quarter compared to the same period a year ago.
Extensive global virus epidemics in August increased the general awareness of data security threats. Newly established European channels in the consumer and small business segments, the Group’s quality products and leading anti-virus laboratory helped the sales in markets where the company’s products are widely available. The Group’s anti-virus research team’s role was instrumental in cracking down the potentially very dangerous Sobig.F virus together with FBI and CERT organizations around the world.
Customer satisfaction further increased from existing high level. In the annual customer satisfaction survey where 4282 customers in 24 countries were interviewed F-Secure got the following grades (on a scale 1-5): F-Secure as a company 4.31 (4.27 in 2002); the willingness to recommend F-Secure’s products 4.36 (4.34 in 2002).
The F-Secure Anti-Virus Client Security product was piloted by first SMB customers in early Q3. It contains anti-virus, email scanning, stateful inspection firewall, intrusion detection and application control with centralized management in one single package. This type of solution is a necessity when preventing more and more frequent Blaster type worms, where traditional antivirus is not enough. The F-Secure Internet Gatekeeper anti-virus gateway product for web and email traffic was also introduced. These two comprise the most important product introductions for the year 2003.
F-Secure Anti-Virus Client Security received the Editor’s Choice award from PC Plus Magazine in the UK. This was the first test this product participated in.
“Investments in the development of our partner channel and quality products, which prevent more and more complex threats have proven the be the right ones. Based on this we continue to develop our business in the challenging environment and expect our turnover to be positive for the full year 2003”, says Risto Siilasmaa, President and CEO of F-Secure Corporation.
Key events after the end of the reporting period
After the reporting period, the Group announced partnerships with Czech Telecom (Czech Republic), TDC Cable (Denmark) and BlueCom (Norway). The Group currently has 17 public ISP partners in nine countries.
The Group announced F-Secure Mobile Services(tm), a platform for hosting automatic subscription-based wireless security services with a patented SMS update mechanism and F-Secure Anti-Virus for Series 60, a fully automatic security solution that offers transparent real-time protection against harmful content locally on the Symbian OS(tm) device.
Reporting
A press and analyst conference will be arranged today, October 30, at 11 am Finnish time at the Group’s Headquarters, Tammasaarenkatu 7, Helsinki. A conference call for international investors and analysts will be arranged at 14.00 Finnish time (13.00 CET). Instructions at:
http://www.europe.fsecure.com/investor-relations/
For full stock exchange release, please visit:
http://www.Europe.F-Secure.com/investor-relations/news/