PETALING JAYA: Mesdaq-listed K-One Technology Bhd said its partnership with US-based Livescribe Inc reinforces its confidence of continued earnings growth.

“We are still confident of our earlier projected double-digit growth in revenue for this year. And this deal is an added bonus for us as our projections did not include this business.

“At this juncture, it is premature to disclose the size or value of this partnership but till now, we have invested about more than RM1 million in this deal,” chairman Edwin Lim said at the signing ceremony on April 15.

K-One will develop and manufacture the smartpen product line for Livescribe. BIG’ant (M) Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of K-One, is the authorised distributor of Livescibe “Pulse” smartpen in the Asean, Oceania and Middle East markets.

Lim said he was unable to disclose the targeted sales for the product but expected demand to be good in the region.

Over 100,000 smartpen units have been sold in the last six months and Livescribe’s founder and chief executive Jim Marggraff said the global addressable market was one billion in the next 10 years.

“The potential for global expansion with K-One for this product is very strong. Sales are now over projections,” Marggraff said.

K-One added it was in the right industry and thus would still see growth albeit at a slower pace.

“With this economy, people are still spending but on the right things, and we believe we are in the right industry at the right time. This is a resilient industry as it is still at the beginning stage where there is still a lot of room for growth and not a lot of the technology is obsolete yet,” it said.

For fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2008 (FY08), K-One registered a 9.2% increase in net profit to RM2.6 million from RM2.4 million a year earlier due mainly to better cost control. Revenue, however, dropped 1.4% to RM18.1 million.

For FY08, net profit rose 3.3% to RM6 million on the back of RM61.9 million revenue, 10.5% higher than the previous year.