Trend Micro reports record sales, profits for 2005

Sales were Ľ73 billion (US$619.7 million as of Dec. 31, the last day of the period being reported), up 18 percent over 2004, and net profit was Ľ18.7 billion, which was also up 18 percent, the company said on Thursday. Trend Micro is based in Tokyo and its financial year follows the calendar year.

The strong results reflect several things including growing demand for its antivirus system for small office and consumer users and strong demand for network-based antivirus services, the company said.

Sales of the company's 2006 version of its PC-cillin consumer antivirus product, which began in November, started strong, said Naomi Ikenomoto, from the company's investor relations department.

"New threats keep on coming so demand is good," she said.

During the year the company was forced to spend about Ľ1 billion to help customers after it mistakenly issued a virus pattern file update that contained a bug. The file, when loaded onto PCs, caused the machines to slow or stop working and affected thousands of customers mainly in Japan. The extra costs were incurred dealing with hundreds of thousands of support calls and advertising, the company said.

As a result of the problems, the company's chief executive officer, Eva Chen, cut her own salary to Ľ594 for the two months that it took to fix entirely the problem. The figure referred to the buggy file, Official Pattern Release (OPR) 2.594.00.