MONTREAL – March 31, 2021 – With the completion of its 2020 year-end review, Grass Valley is celebrating a period of significant business growth — despite the unprecedented backdrop of a very challenging 12 months. In 2020, Grass Valley established itself as a standalone, privately-backed company, launched a string of new innovations, and forged ahead with its vision for a cloud-based future with the GV Media Universe, powered by the debut of its cloud-based SaaS platform, GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform). 2020 started out with big changes in store as it had been announced in late 2019 that the company would be sold. The entire world was then met with the tragedy and disruption caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these challenges, Grass Valley celebrated many notable accomplishments during 2020 like the completion of its transition to a standalone company under new ownership and other notable successes, including:
  • Launched GV Media Universe and its initial applications, AMPP Master Control and AMPP Playout, with Blizzard Entertainment and Eurosport respectively as on-air customers at launch. The ground-breaking, cloud-first GV Media Universe vision brings to life an ecosystem of solutions with connected partners and connected devices that’s certain to be the foundation of a move into cloud-based workflows for many media companies worldwide. The GV Media Universe continues to evolve with new applications launched regularly.
  • Saw tremendous IP growth led by our GV Orbit Control and Monitoring software, increasing full year revenue from IP networking products nearly 30% despite the impacts of the pandemic. We believe the industry has reached an inflection point in IP adoption, crossing from early adopters to mainstream growth;
  • Weathered the COVID-19 driven downturn in our critical live sports market in the first three quarters and finished with Q4 2020 revenues at pre-pandemic levels. The recovery of the live sports market continues in 2021 as live sports revenue for the three month period ending on January 31st, is up 6% vs. the same period for the previous year;
  • Formed GVx Customer Council, comprised of thought-leaders and innovators in our customer base, which has helped to steer the product development roadmap and solidified Grass Valley’s uniquely strong relationship with customers;
  • Began the process of opening a new Center of Excellence (COE) in Krakow, Poland, and expanding existing COEs in Montreal and Kuala Lumpur.
Milestone solution introductions in 2020 included the highly successful launch of our cloud platform, GV AMPP, which grew from 0 to 12 active customers and GV’s award-winning native IP camera platform, the LDX 100. This is a high-speed, UHD-programmed camera that delivers IP signals directly from the camera into the network — eliminating the base station. 2020 also saw the debut of Grass Valley's award-winning K-Frame XP switcher, the no-compromise 4K UHD/HD, IP and SDI video processing engine that launched last Spring. Also coming to market last year were Grass Valley’s award-winning, multiformat, non-linear editing software EDIUS X, all-in-one production suite GV STRATUS One Pro and live highlights and replay production in 4K UHD and HDR in the fully redesigned LiveTouch 1300. Grass Valley's CEO and president, Tim Shoulders, commented, "We achieved some incredible results last year, despite the obvious challenges. Our innovative team didn’t miss a beat and I applaud them for their commitment, hard-work and tenacity in serving our customers. Most importantly, we managed to avoid significant operational disruption from COVID-19 by being diligent in our efforts to protect our employees and our customers. We are committed to remaining our customers’ trusted and reliable technology partner of choice as we lead the industry into the cloud. We’re grateful for our customers’ trust and vote of confidence delivered in our fantastic Q4 2020 results.”