Infogrames reports revenue decline, lowers full year profit target

French publisher Infogrames, the parent company of Atari, has announced its revenue figures for the full year to March 31st - revealing that sales fell by 14 per cent year on year, with operating profit also expected to take a hit.

Full-year sales came in at 602.3 million Euro, compared with 700.8 million Euro in the 2004 fiscal year, with the bulk of the fall being driven by a smaller catalogue of releases and a weak dollar which reduced the value of US sales.

However, even at consistent currency exchange rates, the company would still only have recorded 624.2 million Euro in revenues, despite the fact that North America accounted for 52.3 per cent of total revenue.

The firm has yet to announce a final figure for profit during the year - only the revenue figures were announced in this release - but it indicated that it expects to report operating profit of around 20 million Euro, which is the lowest end of its previous target of 20 to 30 million.

The company also declined to give any predictions for the 2006 financial year, with chief executive Bruno Bonnell simply saying that "it is a year very hard to predict and we must be cautious."

However, there was good news on the debt front, with the firm reporting that it has made significant headway in dealing with the massive debts which have made investors wary of the company over the last few years.

Debt levels now stand at under 200 million Euro, down from 313.3 million at the end of the previous fiscal year, and according to Bonnell, the next major scheduled payment - a 26 million Euro banking debt due in July - will be met with ease.

"There is no risk regarding the repayment of the 26 million euros in July," he commented. "The priority of this year is to finally settle the debt problem to focus on profitability."