Business Objects earnings fall ahead of its merger with SAP
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Business Objects reported a 19 percent rise in revenue for the third quarter, driven by services, but earnings were dragged down by a shortfall in license revenue, recent acquisitions and legal costs.While the income figures are broadly in line with preliminary results announced on Oct. 7, the company had expected its earnings to be better. The results come about two weeks after&#160;SAP announced plans to acquire Business Objects&#160;for $6.7 billion.Earnings for the quarter fell to $6.4 million, or $0.07 per share, from $19.6 million, or $0.21 per share, a year earlier, Business Objects said. It had predicted earnings of $0.16 to $0.20 per share.The earnings reported include a charge of around $7 million, equivalent to $0.05 per share, to settle litigation with Decision Warehouse. Business Objects had previously honored Decision Warehouse as its top distributor in Latin America: the company now resells products from&#160;Hyperion, which was recently bought by Oracle, and&#160;BEA Systems, which Oracle is trying to buy.Revenue for the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, was $369 million, up 19 percent compared to a year earlier. The growth was driven by revenue from services such as product maintenance, up 27 percent, and consulting and training, up 34 percent year on year.Growth in license revenue lagged, up just 6 percent compared to a year earlier, although license revenue from all product lines continued to grow, the company said.The&#160;acquisition of Cartesis, completed on June 1, and of&#160;Inxight Software, completed on July 3, added around $21 million in revenue for the quarter.Business Objects also profited from exchange rate fluctuations: while total revenue grew 19 percent year on year, at constant currency rates it grew just 15 percent, while license revenue grew 2 percent at constant currency rates.Business Objects warned that there&#39;s more uncertainty ahead -- and not just because of SAP&#39;s bid for the company, announced Oct. 7.The unexpected shortfall in third-quarter licensing revenue, added to uncertainty about customers&#39; future spending ahead of the merger, prompted the company to withdraw previously issued financial guidance.
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(InfoWorld) - Business Objects released new software WednesdayÂ that combines EPM (enterprise performance management), BI, and data integration into a comprehensive suite aimed at CFOs and business finance managers. The suite, called BusinessObjects EPM XI, integrates products from several acquisitions the company has made over the last two years, includingÂ performance management software from Cartesis,Â ALG, andÂ SRC Software. Those products, combined with Business Object's BI and analytics software, are now integrated on top of the company's XI data-integration and visualization platform. All told, the new product allows CFOs to see and share data from various business analysis and EPM applications -- such as enterprise reporting, scorecarding, sales and budgeting information -- in one software suite, said Marge Breya, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Business Objects on a conference call Wednesday. Business Objects, which has headquarters in Paris and San Jose, California, remains one of the only BI pure plays still standing, and the company shows little sign of slowing down amid heightened competition. The company moved into the fast-growing EPM space a couple of years ago to keep up with some of its big-name competitors, which include not only traditional BI vendors like Cognos, but also more diversified applications vendors, such as Oracle and SAP. Even Microsoft plans to get deeper into the fray next month when it will expand its BI repertoire with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. However, Business Objects does not, like Oracle, SAP and Microsoft, sell CRM or ERP software, and differentiates itself by positioning its software as independent and able to run on any set of enterprise applications. EPM XI is the first EPM suite to include profitability analytics, and its ability to make so much analysis and performance information available to financial decision-makers in every part of the enterprise differentiates it from competitors, said Trevor Walker, vice president of product marketing. The suite also includes new software to automate and speed up the process of closing out financial transactions, which is called "the close" and a particular pain point for CFOs, he said. More information about EPM XI can be found on Business Objects' Web site. The software is expected to be generally available on Sept. 30
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German software maker SAP said a stronger euro significantly slowed the growth of its revenue and profits during the third quarter.SAP reported third-quarter revenue of &#8364;2.4 billion ($3.4 billion as of Sept. 30, the last day of the period being reported), up 9 percent over the same period last year. Net profit was &#8364;408 million, up 10 percent from a year ago.SAP said its results could have been stronger, but were held back by the stronger euro. Over the last year, the euro has risen 13 percent against the U.S. dollar, going from an exchange rate of $1.27 on Sept. 30, 2006, to hit $1.43 on Sept. 30, 2007.The euro also rose substantially against the Japanese yen, rising from an exchange rate of &#165;150 to &#165;164 during the same period.Excluding the impact of the stronger euro, SAP said its revenue growth would have been four percentage points higher using constant currencies, while the increase in operating profit -- a number that excludes nonoperating income and taxes used to calculate net profit -- would have been five percentage points higher, reaching 14 percent instead of 9 percent.Despite the hit from currency exchange rates, SAP executives were bullish on the third-quarter results and said the company remains on track to post revenue growth of up to 14 percent, in constant currencies, for the full year, compared to growth of 12 percent last year.Revenue from new software licenses in the quarter was &#8364;715 million, up 11 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, or an increase of 15 percent at constant currencies, SAP said.Revenue from software and software related services, which includes maintenance revenue, was &#8364;1.74 billion, up 13 percent from the year before, or 16 percent at constant currencies.The growth rate from new software licenses was&#160;slower than in SAP&#39;s second quarter, when new license sales increased 18 percent. It was also slower than Oracle&#39;s growth from applications for its latest quarter, reported in September, when new license revenue jumped 65 percent, helped by Oracle&#39;s acquisitions.SAP&#39;s growth was sluggish in Germany and the U.S., where revenue grew only 4 percent, but stronger in the rest of Europe and the Americas. Asia-Pacific growth was 20 percent, excluding Japan, but sales in Japan grew just 3 percent.SAP signed a global enterprise agreement during the quarter to provide software for Apple. Such contracts typically run for five years and generate about &#8364;100 million in revenue for SAP, said SAP spokesman Frank Hartmann. SAP has only eight contracts of this kind, he said, including others with Nestle&#160;and Unilever. Apple was already an SAP customer.The results come at a time of intense competition between SAP and Oracle.&#160;Oracle has sued SAP&#160;for allegedly stealing software and other copyright material, and the companies have announced big acquisitions that take them deeper into each other&#39;s turf.SAP said last week it would&#160;buy business intelligence vendor Business Objects&#160;for $6.8 billion, while Oracle has offered $6.7 billion to&#160;buy middleware vendor BEA Systems, although BEA has said the offer is too low.&#160;
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After loss last year, business software company Siebel Systems Inc. turned to a profit in its third quarter , helped by smaller restructuring expenses.
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InfoWorld - Business Objects released new software Wednesday&#160;that combines EPM (enterprise performance management), BI, and data integration into a comprehensive suite aimed at CFOs and business finance managers.
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SAN FRANCISCO, May 23  â The business software maker CA Inc. predicted fiscal 2008 results below average Wall Street targets, sending its shares down more than 6 percent on Wednesday.
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German software maker SAP said a stronger euro significantly slowed the growth of its revenue and profits during the third quarter.
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Shares of ESS Technology (ESST.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , a maker of computer chips for DVD equipment, fell 4.4 percent in premarket trading on Monday after the company lowered its third-quarter revenue and earnings
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(InfoWorld) - SAP reported anÂ 8 percent jump in its second-quarter net income on Thursday, helped by a sharp increase in revenue from new software licenses. Net income for the quarter was â¬449 million ($605 million as of June 30, the last day of the period being reported), up from â¬415 million in the second quarter last year. That was equal to earnings of â¬0.37 per share, up from â¬0.34 per share a year earlier. Revenue from new software licenses climbed 18 percent to â¬715 million, from â¬604 million last year. Total revenue, including maintenance fees, support and other services, climbed 10 percent to â¬2.4 billion, up from â¬2.2 billion in the second quarter of 2006. The results were better than some analysts expected and showed that SAP is continuing to add new customers even while its main rival, Oracle, grows its applications business throughÂ acquisitions. For the comparable period, its financial quarter ending May 31,Â Oracle increased revenueÂ from new applications licenses by 13 percent, to $641 million. In SAP's biggest market -- Europe, the Middle East, and Africa -- total revenue was up by 12 percent, to â¬1.27 billion. Growth in the Americas, dragged down by the strong euro against the U.S. dollar, was just 6 percent, to give revenue of â¬853 million. SAP continues to grow fastest in Asia, where revenue climbed 20 percent to â¬304 million. CEO Henning Kagermann called it "an excellent quarter." SAP will continue to invest heavily in new products for the midmarket, he said in a statement. The company is spending â¬300 million to â¬400 million over two years to develop a new suite of on-demand applications, intended to offset slower growth from large enterprises. The results come as SAP continues toÂ battle Oracle in U.S. courtÂ for alleged corporate theft. Oracle charged that SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary hacked into Oracle's customer support Web site and downloaded software fixes and support materials for Oracle's PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications. SAP planned to use the materials to offer cut-rate services to Oracle customers, according to Oracle's lawsuit. In its response last month, SAP admitted that TomorrowNow employees had made someÂ "inappropriate" downloadsÂ of Oracle materials. But it played down the extent of the transgressions and said SAP itself did not have access to the materials. A case management conference is set for September. Â
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Shares of Fifth Third Bancorp  fell 7.6 percent before the bell on Friday the morning after the ninth-largest U.S. bank said fourth-quarter profit will fall well short of analysts' forecasts,
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Wabash National Corp. is in the process of stabilizing a faulty SAP implementation, which the company blamed for a sharp drop in second-quarter profits.
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On Tuesday Business Objects will unveil Business Objects XI (Extreme Insight), the first version of its software following last year's acquisition of Crystal Decisions, to completely integrate Business Objects BI software with Crystal Reports.
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InfoWorld - German software maker SAP said a stronger euro significantly slowed the growth of its revenue and profits during the third quarter.
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By Kyodo News International, Tokyo  Feb. 19--TOKYO -- Victor Co. of Japan revised its group earnings forecast  for fiscal 2006 sharply downward Monday, with the pretax account showing a  loss of 7 billion yen compared to a profit of 4 billion yen projected earlier.
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SAP on Tuesday gave employees a heads up that its business user organization will move over to Business Objects, a company its acquiring as part of a $6.8 billion acquisition, according to sources.
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3M Co  said on Tuesday  fourth-quarter earnings fell as last year's results included a  gain for selling a business.
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Software maker SAP AG said Wednesday its profit slipped in the fourth quarter even as sales edged higher, and forecast revenue growth from software sales and services of about 14 percent in 2008.