Q4 2010: An Update on Comptel’s Business and Strategy

On January 3rd, I officially joined Comptel as the new CEO, so I have now been with the company for just over one month. Already, I have travelled extensively to meet customers as well as Comptelians across the world. I have visited the U.K., Italy, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. I have seen some excellent collaboration between Comptel, its partners and communications service providers–and have been very impressed!

Today, Comptel published its Q4 and 2010 results. Comptel’s business developed favourably during the last quarter of the year, with net sales growing and good profitability in Europe, Asia-Pacific and in the Americas. Solution sales picked up towards the year-end, and we also agreed on projects to consolidate and extend some of the systems that have been delivered earlier. Overall, our 2010 financial results have improved from the previous year. Most pleasing of all is to see that partner sales have grown, in line with our strategy.

Overall, our financial position remained strong. This, combined with our excellent products, people, partners and customers provides us, I believe, with a solid basis on which to build up the company.

Q2 2010: An Overview of Comptel’s Business and Strategy

As a public company (NASDAQ OMX Helsinki: CTL1V), Comptel has a duty to publish its quarterly results, and today, we announced our results for the second quarter of 2010.

Being a publicly quoted company means Comptel needs to have a strong financial discipline, which sometimes requires us to make tough decisions, but ultimately ensures that Comptel is able to invest in its people, products and solutions for the benefit of our customers. It is telling that Comptel has been in business nearly 25 years (since 1986). How many companies in the OSS/BSS market can claim this? How many companies have come and gone in that time? This is important because Communications Service Providers (CSPs) make investments for the long term, and need to know that they have a reliable “partner for the future”.

In that context, I am pleased to say the second quarter was a good one for Comptel. Our net sales grew significantly, and we almost reached our operating profit target of 20 percent. The growth of net sales was due in part to the recovery in Europe and the Americas, which was very pleasing as Comptel (in common with other OSS/BSS companies) had been hit in the past year by the downturn in the market in those regions. Significant license upgrades in Asia also contributed to the growth—a good illustration of the partnership we aim to develop with our customers.

Our order book is also looking healthy. During the second quarter, we sold nine new core licenses, including one Comptel Policy Control and one Comptel Dynamic SIM Management, both of which are generating a lot of interest in the market at the moment. We also sold two licenses of Comptel Fulfillment , which is also very pleasing, as it shows there is still plenty of life in the fulfilment market!

Another satisfying point for me is the continued growth of our partner sales. It has been part of Comptel’s strategy to become much more partner-friendly than we have been in the past, and clearly our efforts are bearing fruit.

All in all, I think these result are good news for all of the stake-holders in the company, including of course our investors and our customers.