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TWST: Could we start with a brief introduction to BARCO (Brussels:BAR.BR) including an historical sketch?

Mr. De Prycker: Today, BARCO is a company that is 100% focused on the image processing domain. Over the last several years, BARCO has grown in that domain, but was also investing in two other segments -- high speed communication networks for cable networks and the graphics sector. BARCO has spun off the networking sector activity as BarcoNet and that company was later acquired by Scientific Atlanta. BARCO has also demerged the graphic sector activity and made a joint venture with another company in that field. We now just keep a minority shareholdership in that part of the company. This means that today BARCO is fully focused on image processing with a turnover of around 650 million Euros. The company has always been profitable, although the last year the profitability was somewhat smaller because of the amortization of goodwill from previous acquisitions. The net result was lower, but the company has always been quite positive in terms of profitability.

TWST: Can you tell us a little more about what you are doing in the image processing space, the products that you are bringing to market?

Mr. De Prycker: One segment we are involved in is bringing large visualization systems into the market. These are typically very large screens that are used in a variety of environments, such as sports or media events. A large screen could also be used for simulations in the automotive industry or for aircraft training and also for very high quality, high performance projector systems that allow our customers to optimize the image quality. We are not therefore just talking about large screens. These are typically screens such as LED walls or stereo images, which are generated by very powerful, very intelligent projectors with active stereo screens and so on. Another 28% of BARCO revenue comes from visualization of life critical applications. These are typically screens with 2, 3, 4, 5 million pixels on a screen of 25, 30, 35 inch diameter and used in mainly three applications: military, medical and air traffic control. Then, we have a third segment, which is the smallest part of BARCO, where we capture imaging formation on specific processors, helping these processors optimize the quality of the output. For instance, if you process textile you can use visual inspection systems to assess the quality of the product. It can be used in the same way for food and tobacco. In this segment we are only providing the image quality recognition systems.

TWST: Does this add up to a diverse customer base?

Mr. De Prycker: Yes, we do indeed have a very diverse customer base. We have different market segments and we are only selling to business customers. We are the image processing company leader in the business to business segment. We are selling in segments which range from automobiles to utilities, the oil and gas industry, air traffic control, the medical market, the military market, the textile market. We have typically 17 markets segments we are playing in with all our products.

TWST: How do you see BARCO developing over the next two years and what specific goals will you set out to accomplish?

Mr. De Prycker: We have a number of markets where we have a very good position and obviously it’s up to us to try to expand further into those successful markets. Here, I am talking about the medical market, the event market, and the air traffic control market. We already have the market and it’s now up to us to let it grow. Another way of growing is to use some of the technologies we have developed for one market and bring them into another market. For instance, we have developed very high quality LED screens that have been successfully introduced to the event market. We are now bringing that solution into the media market where we are still subcritical in terms of market share. We feel we have a very good product and we can successfully transfer that into the media market.