Total non-consolidated group revenues for Bull CP8 SA, Compagnie des Machines Bull SA’s embedded microprocessor Smart Card subsidiary, grew 15% to the equivalent of $80m last year, reports managing director Jean-Louis Coulon. CP8 has four subsidiaries – Micro Card Technologies Inc, Dallas, Texas, the SPOM Japan 50-50 joint venture with Dai Nippon Printing Co, Tokyo, CP8 Oberthur and CP8 Microelectronique, Vitre, France. Although exact profit figures for the four subsidiaries were not available because neither Oberthur or SPOM Japan has closed its books, Coulon said it would be over $6m. Coulon added that only Micro Card would show a net loss for 1992, because of interest on debt accumulated over the last several years. Of the total, Bull CP8, which markets the cards and holds the intellectual and manufacturing patents, and CP8 Oberthur, which manufactures the card chips, did $53m, the company said. An exact 1992 net profit figure for Bull CP8 alone was not available, but Coulon estimated that it would total between $445,000 and $500,000, compared with $90,000 in 1991. CP8 had positive cash flow in 1992 of $6m and external debt of only 3% of revenues. The bulk of the turnover, $60m, comes from the production of Smart Cards used in banking, telecommunications, health care and government markets. The rest comes from reader-terminals, patents and licences, the masks superimposed over the card chip that tell it what function to perform, and engineering services. In the last couple of months, CP8 has signed five new patent licences in Japan for manufacture of cards and reader-terminals. CP8 is planning to introduce a Smart Card that can be read by terminals that use different communications protocols. Today, one protocol is used in the US and most of Europe, and another is used by Germany and Japan.
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