To: Thomas Kirwin who wrote (7862 ) 4/25/1999 8:37:00 PM From: flickerful Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 17679
For our employees and our shareholders, l999 promises to be an exciting year. EARNINGS RECAP ampex ended the year comfortably with cash and investments worth $60,000,000. per share profitabilty of .20 absorbed .09, and 06 losses. HOLDING COMPANY STATUS"....An important organizational step was the planned transition to a holding-company structure that we completed early in l999. We believe that this new structure ..... will expand financing options. " GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS "...competitive position remains good, but government spending programs are generally cyclical and the funding restraints that are being applied to them are obviously beyond our control. We have recently announced two major programs with government customers and we see the prospect of several others. However, while we do expect to refill the order pipeline, we do not expect to see much improvement, if any, in shipments to government customers this year." DIGITAL IMAGE ARCHIVES & TEKTRONIXA major opportunity for Ampex Data Systems in 1999 is in digital image archives. "......Some broadcasters and cable networks have begun to re-equip for digital operations and we have won a meaningful share of their business. The recently concluded joint marketing agreement with Tektronix, Inc., a well-established company in the broadcast server market, should generate additional sales of DST libraries. However, despite the publicity about digital television, the actual pace of investment to date has been slow. We are cautiously optimistic that 1999 will begin a significant broadcast re-equipment cycle, but again, while we are well positioned we are not really able to influence the timing of this market opportunity........" ........ relocating a majority of its operations to our facility in Colorado... will provide significantly lower costs by the end of 1999, but will result in substantial costs during the year....." MICRONET "........Ampex is now returning the company to a leadership position in its industry. Its new Genesis products have received very favorable press attention, and new product revenues have been growing in the last few months ... our plan is for MicroNet to be profitable late in the year........several new product introductions." STREAMING VIDEO. [ software vs broadband ]"....Since my letter of last year there has been a key market development that makes the time for Internet video, if not now, then very soon indeed.This development is the dramatic growth in streaming video software... We think that streaming software is the real revolution because it delivers video today whereas broadband delivery is primarily an evolution that will make the video look better over time..." NARROWCASTING and CONTENT LIBRARY. "...Proper targeting of Internet video markets will be important, as will economies of scale in certain areas. Our strategy is to target relatively small groups of highly interested consumers, to assemble a large number of such groups and to reach them through web narrowcasting. In this way we can justify an organization to produce, brand and market our collective content on a major scale. Finally, and importantly, we foresee an opportunity to use Ampex Data Systems' and MicroNet's image storage expertise to archive all of our material, thereby building a content library that will have long-term value, much as television, film and information libraries do today." E COMMERCE & REITER MAJORITY."...Our strategic interest in Reiter stems from the possibility that e-commerce will be the most important source of profit on the Internet, and that it could be useful to have in-house expertise in this field. Our initial investment represented 20% of Reiter's stock with an option to acquire a majority. We will be exercising this option after the end of the first quarter... Reiter will become a majority-owned subsidiary of Ampex ..." LA=ENTERTAINMENT & NY=FASHION "... Accordingly, the efficient gathering of Internet video content requires us to be in the places where the interesting content is. With operations or affiliates in the New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. areas, Ampex is already present in three of the world's key media and content centers and we will be adding more of them in this country and overseas..." UPDATES VIA WWW.... AMPEX EXPERIENCE IS KEY."......our knowledge base is what gives us insight into this opportunity and the resources to be successful..."