ARM has revealed pre-tax profits have risen 16-percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared to the same period the year before. The rise sees the company earning £80 million ($126 million) from revenues of £164.2 million ($262.8 million), itself up by 21-percent from the £137.8 million ($217 million) in Q4 2011.
In terms of full-year figures, ARM received £576.9 million ($913.1 million) in revenues, up 16 percent from £ 491.8 million ($785 million) in 2011, with the entire year’s profit before tax being £276.5 million ($436.4 million).
The company saw 2.5 billion chips being shipped in products for the quarter, with the strong growth of Cortex-A and Mali-based chips allowing processor royalty revenues to grow 21-percent year-on-year. It also believes that, though it already has 36 processor licenses signed for a variety of products, it will see continued momentum in sales for computing, servers, and networking applications, thanks to the signing of a variety of processor licenses.
ARM chief executive officer Warren East states that manufacturers are “developing products to meet the needs of the post PC era and are driving demand for ARM’s most advanced technology,” and that it is “well positioned” for improved sales in 2013. The financial report states that, by the end of 2012, the company’s full-time employee head count had increased by 276 to 2,392 workers, the bulk of the new additions being engineers joining ARM’s processor research and development teams.
