LONDON — ARC International, the licensor of configurable processor cores that last week confirmed that it is in discussions that may result in an offer being made for the company, said revenues for the six month of the year ended June 30 were £7.3 million ($11.0 million), a decrease of 22 percent on the corresponding period last year but in line with expectations.

The company added many of its sites are in the process of being closed. The "previous" headquarters in St Albans wound down its development operations on July 31, 2009 and a number of key processor architects and other technical staff are relocating to the ATG in San Jose.

In an interim statement, ARC (St Albans, England) said net losses before restructuring charges stood at £4.3 million, just over double the amount at the end of the second quarter of 2008.

Net loss for the period after restructuring charges was £6.5 million, compared with £2 million in the first half of last year.

Recently appointed CEO Dr Geoff Bristow said that while "general trading conditions have remained challenging with lengthy sales cycles, we have continued to sign deals and generate royalty revenues."

He added 24 customer contracts were completed in the period, including six new customers, including Augusta.

The company confirmed it is readying a new processor range, designated the ARC 6000, scheduled to be released in November, which on average uses 25 percent less power than its nearest competitor for embedded subsystem applications, and will be the basis of an instruction-set compatible new generation development aimed at a further halving of power-performance ratio.

Commenting on the structural review that he initiated on his appointment as CEO in May, Dr Bristow said numerous operating efficiencies have been identified.

"In a return to a start-up culture of innovation, the company has begun to make a transition to virtualization and teleworking, such that the company's premises now only consist of the ASG, ATG, and a network of sales offices in St Albans, Israel, Russia, Taiwan and elsewhere.

Work has commenced on rationalising the company’s five data centres into two computer centres, expected to deliver an annualized cost saving of more than 75 percent from H209.

"Once fully complete, the streamlining of global operations that has taken place will have resulted in the loss of 34 staff worldwide. Following the restructuring, the group now employs 114 direct staff, excluding its partnership operations in Hyderabad," said Dr Bristow.

The company added it expects to incur further restructuring charges in the second half of the year to account for the rationalization of office locations, provision for further disposals of assets and consolidations of data centres.

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