Cognos completes acquisition of Frango

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management, has completed the acquisition of Frango, a leader in consolidation and financial reporting solutions headquartered in Stockholm. The acquisition was a cash transaction of $53.1 million.

"The acquisition of Frango is an important step in delivering on our commitment to provide market-leading CPM solutions to customers. Adding Frango extends our ability to address key priorities in the office of finance and enhances our distribution channels in key global markets," says Rob Ashe, president and CEO of Cognos.

"Frango also gives us a proven, market-ready product to bring to the lucrative North American market, leveraging our strong infrastructure already in place."

Founded in 1987, Frango is a European-based company with more than 1 300 corporate customers and organisations worldwide. These organisations rely on Frango software to enhance their understanding of corporate performance and improve decision-making. The company is headquartered in Stockholm and operates through wholly owned subsidiaries in 16 countries throughout Europe, Asia and North America.

"Increasingly we are seeing companies embrace performance management as a strategic competitive lever. The finance organisation is critical to both measuring and driving a company`s performance, and it needs a full set of software tools to support these functions. By combining Frango`s consolidation solution with Cognos Planning and Cognos Business Intelligence, Cognos will have a full solution to address finance organisations` needs, enabling Cognos to address their requirements more comprehensively," says Robert D Kugel, VP and Research Director of Financial Performance Management at Ventana Research.

Frango has forged strong relationships with the CFO and finance community, which enhances Cognos`s experience in this area and complements its expertise with the CIO and IT constituencies. Many of Frango`s customers - like Cognos customers - are Global 3500 enterprises, with large deployments. Frango customers include V&S Group, OPG Group, AEGON UK and Interbrew.

"The acquisition of Frango by Cognos gives the V&S Group one integrated solution for performance management. This integration will enable us to more easily adapt to changes in the market," says Jonas Arvidsson, VP Finance and Administration at V&S Distillers.

With the acquisition, customers will benefit from a comprehensive performance management platform which provides the finance office with:

* A cohesive and transparent view of business results.
* Sophisticated financial consolidation for reporting, disclosure and compliance.
* Dynamic and collaborative planning and forecasting providing forward visibility to business plans.
* Leverage of existing customer investments including DW, ERP, HRMS, SCM and CRM operational sources.

Cognos management offers the following outlook for the impact of the acquisition of Frango:

For the third quarter of fiscal 2005, ending 30 November 2004:

* Revenue is expected to be in the range of $4 million to $5 million.
* Diluted earnings per share are expected to be $0.01 dilutive.

For the full fiscal year 2005, ending 28 February 2005:

* Revenue is expected to be in the range of $13 million to $14 million.
* Diluted earnings per share are expected to be neutral to $0.01 dilutive.