Anything goes

With the absence of a major IT event last week and "portals" being a hot issue, it was the excellent quarterly numbers from Yahoo! that dominated the international IT scene last week.

• the abridged prospectus for the private placement of shares for Paracon Holdings was issued;
• Andrew Corporation, the global communications company, announced that it has completed the buy-out of its South African joint venture, Andrew Satcom Africa, in order to make it a wholly-owned subsidiary; and
• Synergy Holdings, the software solutions and tools provider, lists on the development sector of the JSE on Wednesday.

[Local]

Local Cautionary Notices (see attachment)

Other local news included:

• the announcements that Y2KTec and Interconnective Solutions will list in the venture capital sector of the JSE in the near future;
• Thebe SciTech Investments and Cycad financial Holdings will link up in a deal, allowing the former to seek selected investments in various IT groups;
• SA Micro-electronic Systems (Sames), which was placed under provisional liquidation in 1998, has been acquired by Emthonjeni Investments; and
• Cape-based Software Junction had been placed in provisional liquidation.

• the appointment of Richard Thoman as the new president and CEO of Xerox;
• the continuing battle for control of Japan`s International Digital Comms, with NT&T now also making a counter bid to that already made by Cable & Wireless; and
• the news that preliminary discussions are being held between Cable & Wireless and Telewest Communications, between MCI WorldCom and Nextel communications, and between America Online and CBS. The consolidation among telecommunications companies, media companies and Internet players is now well under way. The next few months, if not weeks, will see even more changes in these sectors than we have already witnessed over the past few weeks.

[International]

Other international news included:

• rumours that PeopleSoft will soon acquire a second-tier front-office software vendor;
• that Baan, despite repeated denials, will sell-off the Coda Group and that Ericsson will acquire backbone networking specialist Fore Systems;
• Dataproducts has changed its name to Hitachi Koki Imaging Solutions;
• Silicon Graphics will change its name this week;
• Williams Communications Group has filed for an IPO; and
• Extreme Networks had a great IPO debut.

We saw excellent figures from ComTech Consolidation Group (back in the black), InterVoice (back in the black), Whittman-Hart and Yahoo! (better than expected). Losses, however, came from Genicom, GeoCities (although revenues more than tripled) and Manugistics (revenue also heavily down).

Good numbers were recorded by ATI Technologies (revenue well up but income down), Lernout & Haupsie, Marketwave, Network Associates (back in the black), Pinnacle Data Systems (back in the black), Policy Master Group and Vitesse Semiconductor. Satisfactory numbers were reported by Cognos (income only just up), MIPS Technologies and TSR (better than expected). Mediocre returns came from Oce NV.

Other financial news included profit warnings from AMD, Axent Technologies, Compaq (maybe as low as half that expected!), CTG, Engineering Animation, GT Interactive Software, HNC Software, Hyperion Solutions (shares also hit a 52 week low), Mapics, Network Associates (Q1), Read-Rite, Saville Systems, Silicon Valley Group, Software AG, Symix Systems, Viasoft (includes costs of job cuts), Western Digital (Komag charge) and Wind River; share splits from theglobe.com; and the announcement that Cadence Design Systems will have to re-state its 1998 figures.

Locally

Datacentrix (+34.3%)
Dectronic (+37.5%)
HIX (-29.2%)
MB Technologies (38.6%)
MMW (-20%)

Internationally

ASM International (+20%)
Aspen Technology (-31.8%)
AutoDesk (-22.7%)
Banyan (+27.2%)

CMG Information services (+41.2%)
Credence Systems (+23.4%)
CNET (+45.6%)
Comdisco (+30.4%)
Iridium (+33.9%)

LanOptics (+22.9%)
Mapics (-37.6%)
Network Associates (-47.4%)
Progress Software (-20.8%)
Psinet (+21.9%)
Segue software (-27.1%)
Symix (-37.4%)
Ziff-Davis (-26.8%)

The software solutions and ERP market specifically, is continuing to experience troubled times, but the latest rumour that the Baan brothers are looking to make a comeback seems extremely odd; but in the IT world anything can happen, and often does!