Business intelligence company, Cognos, has announced results for the company`s first quarter of fiscal year 2003, ended 31 May 2002. Revenue for the quarter was $120.1 million. This represents an increase of 11% compared with revenue of $108.0 million for the same period last year.
Net income for the first quarter of fiscal 2003 was $9.9 million or $0.11 per share. This compares with a net loss of $2.1 million, or $0.02 per share, excluding special charges, for the first quarter of fiscal 2002. Including special charges of $12.8 million in the first quarter of last year, the net loss in that quarter was $11.1 million or $0.13 per share.
Business intelligence (BI) licence revenue achieved strong growth in the quarter, reaching $48.0 million. This was an increase of 16% compared with revenue of $41.4 million in the first quarter of the prior fiscal year. Total BI revenue was $111.6 million in the quarter, an increase of 13% compared with $98.7 million for the same period last year.
Cognos further strengthened its balance sheet during the quarter. Net cash flow was $23.7 million, resulting in the company increasing its cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments to $338.3 million at the end of the first quarter.
Highlights of the quarter:
* Four contracts greater than $1 million, equal to the all-time high for Q1;
* 42 contracts greater than $200 000 and 337 contracts greater than $50 000, an increase of 8% and 16%, respectively, over the first quarter of last year;
* Continued strong market acceptance of Cognos Series 7; and
* Introduction of analytic applications suite for SAP, to complement existing JD Edwards and Oracle offerings.
"The results for the quarter slightly exceeded management`s expectations," comments Tharina van der Merwe, marketing and channel manager of Cognos SA. "Cognos` local sales increased across all products, mirroring a lead in global market share."
She says the company`s considerable assets including a strong balance sheet, broad and loyal customer base, strength in R&D, sales and support resources, and excellent product range position the company well to weather the current economic climate, both globally and locally.
"We are pleased with the results for the first quarter," adds Cognos Chief Executive Officer Ron Zambonini. "The strong financial performance in a difficult environment demonstrates solid execution and underscores the success of our business model in winning the enterprise BI market.
"Major organisations throughout the world are selecting the Cognos offering as their strategic enterprise BI solution," he says. "The company was awarded four contracts greater than $1 million in the first quarter, from the US Army Reserve, Mattel, Hewitt Associates, and Starbucks. This equalled the all-time high for a first quarter, and demonstrated the continued penetration of Cognos Series 7 in enterprise-scale deployments."
Zambonini says other large contracts in the quarter were from a broad range of leading corporations and public sector organisations, including GE Power Systems, the University of Washington, Pfizer, Toshiba, Gwinnett County School Board, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Omron Electronics.
"While customer purchasing behaviour remains a challenge, we are confident that the value proposition of our enterprise BI solution and our prospects in the BI market are solid," he concludes. "The company`s competitive position has never been stronger. We are determined to emerge from the current economic environment with a strengthened leadership position in the BI market."
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Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI), delivers software that helps companies improve business performance by enabling effective decision-making at all levels of the organization. A forerunner in defining the BI software category, Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage Corporate Performance Management (CPM) achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale.
CPM lets organizations measure execution against business strategy to ensure the two are aligned at all levels across the enterprise. Cognos provides a framework for CPM that links people, information, and decision-making processes throughout the organisation, and enables the complete management cycle with integrated software for planning, budgeting, reporting, analysis, and scorecarding.
Cognos` framework for CPM includes:
* Cognos Series 7, which provides an enterprise-scale BI framework supporting a full suite of BI tools that deliver query and reporting, analysis, scorecarding, visualisation, and event detection capabilities.
* A common CPM data foundation model that encapsulates business best practices, integrates a company`s business performance measures, and leverages enterprise data sources.
* Enterprise analytic applications that deliver out-of-the-box, predefined, integrated reporting and analysis across major business functions.
* Cognos Finance, a strategic enterprise planning and budgeting application that supports the management cycle and enables finance professionals to manage all core financial processes within one environment.
Cognos serves more than 19 000 customers in over 120 countries. Cognos business intelligence solutions and services are also available from more than 3 000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.
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