Mobile data services provider Zamano posted revenue of €13.3 million for the first six months of 2009, down from €23.7 million for the same period a year earlier.
The firm improved gross margins and Ebitda margins, maintained adjusted EPS at 2.3 cents and generated €2.1 million of operating cashflow during the period under review.
The group's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 7 per cent to €2.3 million. Ebitda margin increased to 17 per cent, up 7 percentage points on the same period in 2008.
Profits before tax fell marginally from €0.67 million to €0.60 million.
Zamano recorded revenue of €8.8 million in the UK, €1.7 million in Ireland and €0.6 million in Australia. However, losses in these traditional markets were partially offset by gains in the US and Spain.
The company's share of the US market grew, with revenue increasing by 44 per cent to €1.9 million. Additionally, the Group entered the Spanish market in January and has established annualised revenues of €600,000. In July, Zamano began operations in South Africa where it said it was already in profit.
Chief executive John O'Shea attributed the decline in revenue to a planned shift to lower volume, higher margin revenue, the impact of regulatory change and a weak consumer environment.
"We're in very challenging times and the key thing for us is to manage our way through it and during the first half of the year we managed costs very aggressively," told The Irish Times. "Currently we're trying to manage growth and decline in parallel which is obviously not easy."
Earlier this year the company announced it was focusing on diversifying in order to cement its position in the mobile sector. Mr O'Shea said the type of content Zamano is delivering has changed completely over the past 12 months with mobile ringtones and wallpapers being replaced by interactive mobile applications, games, competitions and corporate products.
Zamano said it has established a new smartphone application team to develop both mobile entertainment and corporate applications. The team is currently developing and testing new billing mechanisms to take advantage of convergence between the mobile and fixed line internet.
"The whole industry is undergoing changes and we're starting to see developments which we think are very promising and so we are redirecting resources into growth areas. Smartphones are the key growth area for the business right now," he said.
Looking ahead, Mr O'Shea said it was confident about its prospects.
"We are not out of the water yet. We're trying to accelerate the growth initiatives and will undertake a process internally to see what we can do to speed up the means by which we take advantage of the opportunities out there but I'm optimistic about the future of the company and of the mobile sector as a whole."
