Interim Results, June 2004

Posted: 24/09/2004

Interim Results for the six months ended 30th June 2004

Results

I am pleased to report that sales for the six months ending 30 June 2004, at £46,202, were triple the level of the same period a year ago (2003: £15,333). The loss in the six months was lower, at £227,021 (2003: £233,919) and the balance sheet remains strong with cash resources at £1,874,171 (2003: £2,442,962).

The company continues its tight cost control and efficient use of skilled resources and partners.

Progress

We have continued our move towards the successful commercialisation of value added products, culminating in the launch of FORscene at Europes largest broadcasting convention, IBC, in Amsterdam this September. FORscene combines Forbiddens web and mobile technology into an intuitive editing front end.

FORscene pulls together the full process of ingesting raw video, editing it and publishing it through multiple channels across different bandwidths, e.g. mobile, broadband and modem. One of our earliest customers and our development partner is Mentorn, one of the largest production companies in the UK. Their support for the product is evident from the video interview which can be seen on our website http://www.forbidden.co.uk/. The product is being sold either as a pay-as-you-go service, or through the provision of an in-house system with usage based charges. Our pay as you go service allows customers to log in from anywhere in the world and edit and collaborate in the post production process, an activity that to date has often involved long delays, expensive flights and sending video tapes by courier.

FORscene adds many benefits to the production and distribution of videos at a significantly lower cost to current alternatives. The key benefits include multi-location collaborative editing, easy access to video for client approval, a low up-front cost compared to current editing systems, the ability to add web based channels to monetize archived video and the ability to provide distribution of produced materials down multiple channels. It uses the FORlive codec launched last year and can now be done on your own PC without any software or hardware upgrades. FORweb (video on the web) and FORmobile (video on mobile phones) are now as simple as drag and drop on the graphical user interface.

At the IBC event the organisers used Forbiddens FORmobile player to distribute news of their event on mobile phones. Using an IBC branded player, delegates were able to swap videos for free using our Viewtooth technology.

Prospects

FORscene was greeted with acclaim at IBC as a technical breakthrough in the large established video editing and publishing market. The product also extends this market into new areas for web and mobile video publishing, giving content owners easy access to these channels. Numerous visitors have expressed strong interest in the product and the first sales are already coming in. We expect FORscene to become a very significant product as it develops over the coming year.

Victor Steel
Chairman