F-Secure has been growing faster than its stock exchange listed
competitors for ten consecutive quarters. The company was able to
raise its EBIT up to 7,4m euro for the complete year (6,5m in 2004)
despite investments and other extensive inputs. The fastest growth
was seen in the consumer and the service provider businesses.
F-Secure hired 119 new professionals to demanding positions during
2005, the majority of whom are in Finland. Over 64% of the
corporation’s turnover comes from outside the Nordic countries.
The graph above represents F-Secure’s growth in the last ten
quarters compared to other publicly listed competitors. In the last
quarter of 2005 the industry showed a considerable slowdown in
growth compared to the last year. Contrary to this trend, F-Secure’s
growth accelerated by over 50 %.
In 2005 F-Secure announced a number of new product solutions. In
its product announcements the company has taken special
consideration of the fastest developing and latest business models
in the field of data security. In this manner, F-Secure has been
able to create new business possibilities in the data security
ecosystem for different parties such as the corporate business
focused Internet or IT service providers, consumer ISP enterprises
and mobile phone operators.
In its offering directed to the corporate sector, F-Secure
expanded its range with the F-Secure Messaging Security Gateway
solution, which is a so-called appliance type instrument solution.
This has been well received by the market. For service providers,
the F-Secure Service platforms offer flexible and efficient
solutions. The product range includes different platforms for
various target groups and solutions match corporations, small
businesses, consumers, mobile phone users, operator networks and
gateway solutions. F-Secure expanded its range also with the
acquisition in autumn of Rommon Ltd, a Finnish company which brings
service providers a network level solution to observe and control
disruptive network traffic. The new F-Secure Network Control
combined solution prevents network abuse and network-based attacks,
which typically cause bandwidth problems or denial of service. In
the consumer sector, growth has been aided by the increased
availability of fast Internet connections and the continuous
increase in the awareness of Internet-borne threats.
F-Secure’s CEO, Risto Siilasmaa said: “The principal goal of
year 2005 was to grow faster than our competitors in the antivirus
and intrusion prevention business which was achieved by a 44%
growth figure. We have seen that our customers’ purchase behaviour
is changing dramatically and consumers as well as companies are
acquiring data security preferably in the form of a service rather
than in other ways. We are the clear leader in the provision of
data security in Europe in which over 70 service providers sell
exclusively F-Secure based services to their customers. Based on
our good success in consumer directed ISP business activities, we
have been encouraged to expand our security as a service concept
solutions to the small and medium-sized business sectors. This has
progressed well in year 2005.”
The most significant factor in F-Secure’s future growth is
specifically the security as a service concept. Growth will also be
achieved through the consistent development of channels throughout
Europe’s central markets as well as through an increasingly
comprehensive product range, reliable services and carefully
controlled geographical expansion. Potential business growth can be
seen in North America and in Asia. The increasing significance of
mobile threats in 2005 is also an areas for growth in the data
security and service fields. In recent months, certain cooperation
models with mobile operators, Nokia and other mobile industry
operatives have given us reason for optimism in the development of
the mobile sector.
Reporting
A press and analyst meeting will be held on February 14 at 11:00
Finnish time at the corporation’s headquarters at Tammasaarenkatu
7, Helsinki. A phone conference for international investors and
analysts will be held 14:30 Finnish time. For further instructions,
please view our
investor
pages.
Quarterly reports for 2006 will be published on April 27 (Q1),
August 1 (Q2) and October 24(Q3). A Stock Exchange bulletin will be
sent at 9 am Finnish time to the Helsinki Exchanges, a press and
analyst conference will be arranged at 11 am Finnish time in
Helsinki, and an international conference call will be arranged in
the afternoon. Full details will be provided later on the Group's
web site.
Additional information:
F-Secure Corporation
Risto Siilasmaa, President and CEO
tel.358 9 2520 5510
Taneli Virtanen, CFO
tel.358 9 2520 5655
