Planar Reports Strong Digital Signage Sales Growth

November 11, 2014 by Dave Haynes

Portland-based specialty display manufacturer Planar Systems, Inc. has reported its year-end financial, showing big year to year growth in sales on
digital signage products.

For fiscal Q4, total revenue increased 17% year on year to $53.6 million compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013. Revenue was driven by a 42% increase in sales of Digital Signage products, which totaled $25.2 million in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2014, compared to $17.7 million in the same period a year ago. Sales of Commercial and Industrial products increased 2% to $28.4 million compared to $28.0 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013.

For the entire 2014 fiscal year, total revenue increased 7% to $179.0 million compared to fiscal 2013, driven by a 36% increase in the sale ofDigital Signage  products, which totaled $84.5 million compared to $62.1 million a year ago. The increase in total revenue was partially offset by a 10% decrease in sales of C&I products to $94.5 million compared to fiscal 2013. The anticipated decrease in C&I revenue was primarily due to lower sales of touch monitors and high-end home products, partially offset by higher sales of custom C&I displays.

Gerry Perkel, President and Chief Executive Officer, was asked in a conference call where the digital signage business was being generated: “Well, for our digital signage products, we see them being sold in a wide variety of industries and different applications as well. Retail is a good customer for us. We also are getting some good business in the hospitality space. We’re getting good business in higher education, corporate, airports, sports arena, it’s really kind of all over the place; museums has been a pretty good market for us in this past year.”

“So we’re seeing it pretty much across the board. And in addition, some of our digital signage products are used in applications like control room applications or even board room applications. And so we’re just seeing a tremendous growth. And it’s not really linked to one industry or another, we see stuff in the government, we see stuff in the private sector, it’s really been pretty much all over the board.”

Perkel said in earlier, prepared statements:

“In fiscal 2014, we made significant progress on our strategic transformation into a higher-growth and more profitable company. This was evident from the several milestones we achieved for the year, including record digital signage product sales, significant gross profit improvement, and company-wide profitability.”

“Looking ahead, our expectations for fiscal 2015 remain high as we build on the operational and financial momentum we achieved last year. We continue to expect strong growth in our digital signage products, which we believe will drive higher gross profits and EPS expansion.”