<http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1097704208483&call_pageid=968350072197> TheStar.com Oct. 14, 2004. 01:00 AM Certicom sees lift from entertainment industry Certicom Corp. sees growing demand for its data encryption technology in both government and the private sector, its CEO told the annual meeting yesterday. The explosion of digital music, movies and books that are easily copied is causing companies such as The Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Inc. to demand electronic devices and distribution networks be fully secure, Ian McKinnon said. "DVD players, set-top boxes and digital cable carry vast amounts of valuable content, all of which is very easy to copy," McKinnon said. "Very soon, every consumer device needs to have security embedded in its hardware to protect content. That's obviously a vast market." The technology at the core of Certicom's products - elliptic-curve cryptography, or ECC - is well suited to such purposes since it can work faster and requires less computing power and storage than conventional forms of cryptography, he said. Certicom got a lift from a $25 million (U.S.) contract to supply software to the U.S. National Security Agency, giving the Mississauga-based company its first profitable year and endorsing ECC as its new encryption standard, McKinnon said. The security agency's purchase provided most of Certicom's revenue of $34.5 million in its financial year ended April 30. The year's profit was $16.8 million, or 47 cents per share. The contract was followed by a deal with Research In Motion Ltd., which is embedding Certicom's technology in its BlackBerry wireless e-mail products and paying royalties over a number of quarters. In the first quarter of its current fiscal year, Certicom's revenue was up by $700,000, or nearly 32 per cent, from $2.2 million a year earlier. But the company fell back into the red in the May-July quarter, albeit with a $1.2 million loss that was 25 per cent smaller than the $1.6 million reported a year earlier. Asked by a shareholder when Certicom would achieve sustainable profitability, McKinnon said he is "extremely upbeat about the company's future" but is not prepared to provide guidance on revenue or profitability. "As goes ECC adoption will go the growth of the company." CANADIAN PRESS -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'