Business: Impact 50

PROVIDENCE — Motorists and mariners continued to cling to their TVs in 2006, powering strong sales for KVH Industries Inc., the Middletown maker of mobile satellite dishes.

For the year ended Dec. 31, 2006, the company’s revenues jumped 11 percent, to $79 million, compared to $71.3 million for 2005.

Including strong sales to the military of navigational and other equipment, KVH generated a $3.7-million profit last year, compared with net income of $2.9 million in 2005.

That performance has boosted hiring at the company, founded in a Newport basement in 1982.

KVH, now headquartered in a 75,000-square-foot building in the town’s Enterprise Park, says it has outgrown its space. In addition to investing $2 million to add new offices at its headquarters, company officials recently disclosed plans to expand in Middletown, perhaps by building a 70,000-square-foot facility on a nearby parcel.

“We always have new positions that are opening,” spokesman Christopher Watson said earlier this month. “We’re always growing.”

That is welcome news to state and local officials, who have been trying to find ways to increase high-paying jobs in the state.

Although the state’s unemployment rate is close to the national average of 4.5 percent, Rhode Island’s median income has lagged.

The average wage in the state is about $37,000, $3,500 below the national average. Only 40 percent of jobs in the state pay more than $40,500, compared with nearly 60 percent in Massachusetts, according to Saul Kaplan, chairman of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.

Two of the state’s largest technology companies, meanwhile, were recently acquired by out-of-state companies, raising questions about the future of more than 2,200 jobs in that sector.

GTECH Holdings Corp. recently moved into a new high-rise downtown, its logo glowing beside the Providence Place mall, but the company’s owners now live far from Rhode Island.

Last August, Italian lottery operator Lottomatica SpA, based in Rome, acquired GTECH for $4.8 billion.

So far, however, the acquisition does not appear to have diminished employment.

GTECH’s chief executive officer, W. Bruce Turner, is now CEO of the parent company, and he has called Providence the “business headquarters” of the combined entity. Recently, Lottomatica moved its newly appointed chief financial officer, Stefano Bortoli, to Rhode Island.

“I’ve been there and I like it,” Bortoli told the Journal in a recent interview. “The environment is very attractive to me, and I’ve been very much welcome by everyone in the organization.”

Lottomatica’s annual profits last year were almost completely consumed by costs and foreign-exchange losses linked to the GTECH purchase. The company said net income had fallen to about $1.1 million.

Revenue growth, however, has been strong since the acquisition, the company says.

Another major employer in the state’s technology sector, American Power Conversion, was also recently bought by a foreign company.

The acquisition, by the French firm Schneider Electric SA, was approved by shareholders in January and officially closed the following month.

That deal has also caused anxiety in Rhode Island, although the new president, Laurent Vernerey, has said he has no plans to significantly reduce the company’s operations in South Kingstown.

The deal was completed in February, but APC did not issue fourth-quarter or year-end earnings announcements for last year. Chet Lasell, a company spokesman, said revenue last year was $2.4 billion, up $400 million from 2005.

Technology-service provider Perot Systems Corp. saw profits decline significantly last year, dropping to $81 million from $111 million in 2005, according to company filings. The company, based in Texas, manages data processing for several Rhode Island institutions.

Texas-based Electronic Data Systems Corp., which has an office in Rhode Island, fared better. EDS posted adjusted net income of $522 million last year, far exceeding the $219 million in 2005, the company said in a statement. EMC Corp., the data-storage company in Hopkinton, Mass., generated $11.2 billion last year, 15 percent higher than the $9.7 billion it garnered in 2005, the company said in a statement.

The Kopin Corp., a transistor and LCD designer in Taunton, Mass., saw revenues fall last year. The company said total revenue in 2006 was $71 million, compared with $90 million in 2005.

bgedan@projo.com