Gemplus Group, the French company that leads the world in chip card production, said it finished 1994 with revenues equivalent to $205 million, 44% better than in 1993.
The company, which is structured as a limited partnership, said revenues doubled over two years and profits are rising at a proportional rate.
Gemplus claims a 34% share of smart cards sold worldwide. It produced 140 million cards last year, up from 103 million in 1993.
The company, founded in 1998 and based in Gemenos, France, focused on manufacturing innovations to vault ahead of longer-established chip producers like Groupe Bull and Schlumberger. Gemplus factories in Gemenos and La Ciotat, France, and Stuttgart, Germany, can produce 20 million cards a month.
Aside from meeting demand in France, the first country to adopt chip technology in most card applications, Gemplus pursued international growth. It exports to 70 countries, serves the U.S. market from an office in Gaithersburg, Md., and opened new sales subsidiaries last year in Australia, China, Japan, Mexico, and Venezuela.
The company passed the 1,000-employee mark in 1994. Of 1,174 employees, 1,042 are based in France.
In its yearend earnings summary, Gemplus said 1995 could see the start of an explosion of chip cards in banking, as systems begin to be built for the jointly agreed technical specifications of the MasterCard, Visa, and Europay associations.
Gemplus also is seeing significant growth in Russia and Eastern Europe. It has signed contracts to supply phone cards to companies in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania, and wireless communications cards for the Baltic states and Russia.
