OCZ Rock and Rolls through Second Quarter, Plucks UK-based SoC Design Team from PLX

Posted 10/06/2011 at 6:38am | by Paul Lilly

3

Comments

Print

Remember being angry and disappointed when OCZ dumped its DRAM business to pursue other interests? Looking back, it's hard to argue with that decision, and even more so when you consider the numbers. OCZ said it wanted to concentrate its efforts on the solid state drive market, and as a result, the company's SSD revenue reached a record $71.1 million in its second fiscal quarter of 2012. That's a 252 percent gain from one year prior when SSD revenue was $20.2 million.

That wasn't the only record number for OCZ, which posted net revenue of $78.5 million, more than doubling its Q2 2011 net revenue of $38 million. OCZ's gross margin increased 21.6 percent compared to 4.3 percent one year prior, and its GAAP net income was $3.2 million, compared with a GAAP net loss of $7.6 million a year ago.

OCZ's strong performance bodes well for the company's future. With so much focus on SSDs, OCZ is well positioned to take advantage of the upcoming growth. Depending on which market research firm you put your faith in, SSD shipments are on track to grow up to 90 percent annually for the next several years.

It will be interesting to see how OCZ rides the wave. After acquiring Indilinx earlier in the year, a maker of SSD chip controllers, OCZ has now gone and scooped up a UK design team from PLX Technology.

"We are pleased to augment our engineering organization with the UK Design Team as they have been providing best of breed system-on-chip designs, software, and firmware since 1992," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "We believe the additional engineers along with the access to increased IP resources will enable us to significantly reduce the costs associated with storage protocol licensing, while simultaneously speeding our time to market."

The design team consists of about 40 engineers. As part of the deal, OCZ also receives a perpetual license to PLX's technology patents.

Image Credit: OCZ