Israeli-based NFC and contactless company On Track Innovations pushed back its prediction for positive adjusted EBITDA to the third quarter of 2015 and reduced its estimate for 2014 revenue growth to 10%, down from the 30% it had predicted previously, the company reported in its quarterly earnings call.
The company’s third quarter revenue suffered from uncertainty among potential customers about whether Apple would adopt NFC or another technology, such as BLE, for mobile payments in the iPhone 6, which would impact demand for OTI’s NFC readers, CEO Ofer Tziperman told investors and analysts during a conference call this week.
“Several of our new and existing customers delayed purchasing decisions during the quarter in order to see if Apple was going to join the NFC revolution or instead adopt an alternative technology,” said Tziperman. He told investors and analysts, “To a great extent, our third quarter revenues reflected the uncertainty and ‘let’s wait and see’ position taken by key major market players ahead of the iPhone launch, as well as the industry’s speculation about the device’s potential NFC capability. This was then followed by questions around expected functionality of Apple Pay.”
