Harman added nearly 500 patents to its growing intellectual...

Harman added nearly 500 patents to its growing intellectual property portfolio in 2013, CEO Dinesh Paliwal said on an earnings call Tuesday. The IP portfolio numbers almost 5,000 patents, Paliwal said, with 3,100 of those coming over the last five years as the company is “rapidly incorporating” the innovations into its products. The expanding IP folder is helping Harman add customers and new awards, including “three new competitive replacement wins” in its infotainment business, which the company will announce at its investor meeting Thursday, he said. The large and “very young” patent portfolio will give Harman flexibility to “license, cross-license and monetize” the patents over the coming years, Paliwal said. Q4 sales at Harman “exceeded all expectations” across the company’s infotainment, lifestyle and professional segments, with sales up 8 percent for the quarter ended June 30 to $1.9 billion versus $1.1 billion in the same quarter a year earlier, Paliwal said. He credited the net sales increase to new platform launches in infotainment, including the company’s scalable platform solution announced at CES; growth in home and multimedia products and expansion in the professional division into lighting. Net income for the quarter fell 89 percent to $5 million on restructuring and non-recurring charges, the company said. The restructuring included the elimination of more than 500 jobs in “high-cost countries,” Paliwal said. The company divested a manufacturing facility in Germany, which resulted in 430 additional positions, he said. Infotainment unit revenue grew 4 percent to $614 million for the quarter, and lifestyle unit sales advanced 5 percent to $348 million, the company said. For the fiscal year, Harman posted net income of $143 million on revenue of $4.3 billion, down 2 percent from 2012, it said.