A week of profits and losses

International news last week included the acquisition of Data General by EMC, the take-over of International Network Services by Lucent Technologies in a deal valued at $3.7 billion, and the investment by Cisco into KPMG`s US operation, to create a new venture company that advises on how companies can take advantage of the Internet. Locally, Elexir`s financial woes made headlines.

The EMC/Data General deal opens up a major opportunity in the rapidly growing mid-range storage market for EMC.

The EMC/Data General deal opens up a major opportunity in the rapidly growing mid-range storage market for EMC, which already dominates the top-end. Locally, this deal comes only a few weeks after DG opened a South African office for the first time, after several years of operation via the Comparex Group. The KPMG deal, however, may take some time to materialise, since I suspect there will be a significant amount of red tape to be overcome, especially at Federal level.

• we saw the switch of SFG from the financial services sector of the JSE to the venture capital sector under its new name Pinnacle Technology Holdings;

• the release of good full-year figures from Spicer Holdings (18 months) and Comparex (revenue well up but net income well down); satisfactory full-year numbers from PQ Africa (revenue up but net income well down); and

• the announcement that Integrated Health Technologies will move to the IT sector from the venture capital sector later this month under its new name, Integrated Technology.

[Local]

Local acquisitions, mergers, investments etc (see attachment).

Local Cautionary Notices (see attachment).

Local Listing calendar (see attachment).

Other local news included:

• the resignation of Rasheed Hargey, chairman of Infiniti Holdings and the appointment of two new directors from Union Alliance Holdings, which owns UAM, to the Infiniti board, together with an announcement that the two companies were in discussions regarding a possible deal;

• the opening of a new independent logistics company by Dimension Data; and

• the announcement of a strategic alliance between Oxbridge online and I-Net Bridge.

• we saw the announcement by SGI that it has formed a separate business unit for its Cray supercomputer operation (prior to a sell-off?) and will lay-off up to 17% of its workforce;

• that Western Digital is laying off some 2 500 employees; and

• the filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by Iridium following its $800 million default on its bank loans.

[International]

International acquisitions, mergers, joint ventures etc (see attachment).

We saw excellent figures from CompuDyne, Computer Concepts, Elron Electronic Industries, Innodata, and IXOS Software AG.

Losses, however, came from Acacia Research, Accent Software, AlphaServ.com, AvTel Comms, Birch Telecom, Clearnet Comms, Data Systems and Software, Davel Comms, Euronet, GTS, Healtheon, iMall, Infodata Systems, Information Analysis, Intellicorp, Interliant, IPC, Logix Comms Enterprises, ObjectShare, Paging Network, ParkerVision, Peritus Software Services, RMI.NET, SBA Comms, ScanVec, Tekgraf, Teligent, Telxon, Triton PCS and Vestcom.

Good numbers were recorded by CACI International, Cisco, Comcast (back in the black), Comtrex Systems, Conductus (back in the black), ForSoft, GCI (back in the black), Getronics, Group 1 Software, Kofax Image Products, Nam Tai Electronics, Open Text (back in the black), Pomeroy Computer Resources, QVC, SBS Technologies and Scientific-Atlanta.

Satisfactory results were reported by ADP, Multi-Link Telecomms, Applied Graphics Technologies, BrightStar Information Technology Group (back in the black), Dataram, France Telecom, MAI Systems (back in the black), Netplex (back in the black), Nortech Systems Tyler Technologies and ViaSat.

Mediocre returns came from Anicom, ASA International, GRC International, Ilion Group and Pegasus Group, while very poor results came from ALPNET, Exigent and Vitech America.

Other financial news included profit warnings from MSW Technology (loss expected) and Wall Data (loss expected, and some job cut-backs); share split announcements from Gateway and Lattice Semiconductor; and a very successful IPO from Red Hat, a software-maker for Linux, and by both Quest Software and Active Software.

Locally

Bryant (+73.1%)
CompuClearing (-30%)
Cyberhost (+27.3%)
Elexir (+31.3%)
Hix (-28%)
I-Fusion (-22.8%)
I-solution (-20%)
ITI (-21.2%)
M-Web (-27.3%)
Metropolis (26.7%)
Paradigm (-23.3%)
PentaCom (-31.8%)
Pinnacle ex-SFG (-19.6%)
Top-Tech (-33.9%)
Wentech (-53.1%)
Y2Ktec (+58.8%)

Internationally

Business Objects (+22.2%)
Data General (+38.5%)
Fairchild Semiconductor (+32.9%)
IMSI (-20%)
Iridium (-50%)
MEMC Electronic Materials (+27.8%)
Redback Networks (+33%)
SGI (-31.6%)
Tower Semiconductor (+28.6%)
Triquint Semiconductor (+25.3%)

Next week I will be participating in The African Computing & Telecommunications Summit in Cambridge in the UK. As a result, my next column will not appear until 6 September, when I will summarise events during the intervening weeks, as well as report briefly on the summit.