Aug 26, 2021 | Business
Imagination Technologies announces initial unaudited results for the first half of 2021 (H1/2021), where overall revenues increased by 55% to $76m (H1/2020: $49m).
Based on strong first half bookings and revenues, together with a robust pipeline of sales opportunities, the Company now expects full-year revenues to grow by around 25% relative to 2020. It expects the growth to be broad-based across key strategic market segments.
Adjusted EBITDA* increased by $20m to $17m (2020: -$3m); and adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 22% (H1/2020: -7%). Current cash is $70m (H1/2020 $36m); the business has no external third-party debt.
In the first half Imagination signed over 35 licensees across segments including automotive, datacentre and desktop, mobile, and DTV. Imagination has a 37% share in smartphone graphics processing unit (GPU) (source: TSR) and is the largest GPU supplier to the automotive industry with approx. 45% share and over a quarter of a billion automotive units shipped (source: company data).
Imagination identified the datacentre and desktop market as a significant opportunity during its strategic review in Q4/2020 and has used the high-performance of its A-Series and B-Series GPU products to gain significant traction in this higher performance GPU space with significant revenue growth amongst customers in these segments. The company expects to launch a further GPU family, C-Series, in Q4/2021, maintaining a rapid pace of technology development and roll-out.
In Automotive, the transition to EV (electric vehicles), especially in China, is creating a strong pipeline of growth opportunities in a market in which Imagination is already the leader for HMI (human machine interface) GPU solutions. The company has now entered the autonomous vehicle sub-segment with both its GPU and AI technologies. In addition, the requirement for connecting complex automotive systems has enabled the company to bring a new EPP (ethernet packet processor) offering to market.
This year Imagination is re-entering the CPU market with designs based around the RISC-V open ISA. Imaginations heritage in CPU enables it to provide innovative and patent protected technologies for the discrete CPU market as well as addressing demand for heterogeneous solutions that combine GPU, CPU and AI processors. This strategy will enable further growth.
The company is continuing to invest in engineering and customer support resources at its existing locations in Kings Langley and Bristol (UK), Poland, Romania, India, Taiwan, and China. The company is closing a small office in Australia and opened a new one in Cambridge (UK).
Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO, says: The strong set of first half results, together with the healthy pipeline of opportunities, confirms we are executing well against our refreshed strategy. Were focused on the right segments and the right geographies. Its also gratifying to see that Imagination is back to growth and generating solid profits and free cash-flow. My sense is that we now have good momentum and I look forward to building on the turnaround that we have affected.
Imagination is wholly owned by private equity company Canyon Bridge and specialises in technologies for graphics, including ray tracing; AI, notably neural network acceleration; and general compute, including CPU.
Canyon Bridge founding partner and Imagination Executive Chairman Ray Bingham, says: We are truly delighted by the strong financial results now being delivered by Imagination Technologies. We believe they vindicate the significant investments we have made over the last three years in R&D to ensure that we have market-leading IP. These investments have enabled us to add outstanding new image compression technology to our GPU architecture, which has now won significant market share, and to re-invigorate Imaginations CPU development, exploiting our considerable heritage in CPU IP. Semiconductors have risen in prominence as the world navigates complex manufacturing, lifestyle and geo-political shifts, and Imagination has shown that it has the right technologies, and commitment to strategic partnerships, to lead in the industry.
Mar 26, 2021 | Business
A pessimistic narrative about the future of the planet and its people makes us believe we cannot take the action necessary to build a better world for coming generations; that it is “already too late.” Using optimistic speculation will not only free us to believe that we can make a positive difference, but will also let us imagine what that better future looks like, so we can plan exactly how we will build it.
There is already widespread awareness of human impacts on the planet, the negative impacts on people of inequality, racism and other forms of discrimination, and many other “wicked problems” are making their presence known. More people than ever want positive action (67% of people expressed a desire for climate action in a YouGov poll in November 2020), but the narrative around these issues is relentlessly negative. This leaves those who want to take action clear on what they don’t want to happen, but unclear on the positive steps they can take. There is plenty of armchair activism, where we only have to continually reiterate what is wrong and who is to blame, but little progress towards positive solutions. Inaction is justified by the idea that it is “already too late,” and that action is futile.
Ludogogy.co.uk – a UK-based games-based learning magazine has launched a project which aims to approach wicked problems playfully, creatively, and above all, optimistically.
Sarah Le-Fevre, Ludogogy’s editor, said, “We can start to believe that the future is already written, not something which we can proactively influence, and build according to our own needs, and the needs of future generations. The first step into the realisation of our agency is to imagine what we want the future to look like.”
Speculative Optimism welcomes anyone to participate in a co-creation project, which seeks first to imagine better futures, then provide a platform for projects to move towards those futures, and finally to create an approach to organisational learning to spread the practice of Speculative Optimism so that businesses and other organisations can find ways to innovate for their own future success, finding opportunities in areas that move social, planetary and economic systems towards greater health.
Participants in the project will not only learn skills in Futures Thinking, specifically Foresight techniques, writing craft and other creative skills, but they will build a resilient mindset, to help them face the future more optimistically, as well as an enhanced ability to spot and exploit opportunities for ethical innovation. The project takes the form of a structured set of tasks which gradually build skills and a body of work of Speculative Optimism.
The project is seeking participants who want to join in with the first stage, the creation and publication of a book of Speculative Optimism stories, letters, poems and other written word messages from the future – as well as more concrete artifacts which illustrate a better tomorrow. We are also seeking Futurists, Writers, Editors, Graphic Artists and anyone else with skills that could support the project.
We intend that the project should be as financially self-sustaining as possible, with proceeds from sales of the book and some proceeds from organisational learning programmes being ploughed back into the project to support the platform and also possibly to provide small grants to support innovation and activism projects inspired by the speculative fiction written by participants.
Sarah Le-Fevre said, “Much as we all love ‘Black Mirror’ there is a need, and appetite for, work that inspires because you read it and think ‘I want this’. Speculative fiction has always inspired innovation, and I think if we actively bring the SF and the innovation together in one place, we could start to see projects that make a real difference.”
Participation is free for anyone who wants to join in, but participants can choose to pay, if they can afford to, and if they want to help cover the costs of maintaining the project platform, the publication of the book and other project related costs. We would also welcome sponsors who wish to support this project without participating
Speculative Optimism is a co-created project, open to all, regardless of location, or previous experience of writing or futurist practice. It is being run on a Mighty Networks platform at https://speculative-optimism.mn.co/
