In a week that contained no spectacular IT business news apart from the acquisition of Dialog by Intel, the most significant international story broke on Friday when the president, CEO and chairman of Cabletron, Craig Benson, resigned the day after the company revised its earnings for the past three fiscal years.
The company is still attracting much interest as a take-over candidate. At home it was also a very quiet week, not unexpectedly, in the light of the election.
On the local front
We saw the announcement of mediocre maiden interim results (significantly short of the forecast figures for year-end); and superb year-end (14 months) figures from Billcad Holdings (all numbers and ratios well up).
[Local]
Local Cautionary Notices (see attachment)
Local Listing calendar (see attachment)
On the international front
We heard that Acer and Taiwan Semiconductor were in talks re the latter investing heavily in the former`s loss-making semiconductor unit.
Other international news included the announcement of a re-structuring at Adobe, which will see the shedding of some 9% of its workforce; the appointment of Frances Scricco as president of Arrow Electronics; and yet another senior resignation at Compaq.
[International]
Financial results
On the results front, we saw excellent figures from 4Front Technologies and Infor Business Solutions AG.
Losses, however, came from Algol SpA, CrossKeys, De La Rue International, EFI Electronics, MGI Software, Ortel, Osicom Technologies, Procom Technology, REMEC, Tadpole Technology and TouchStone Software.
Good numbers were recorded by Comverse Technology, Pilat Technologies International (back in the black), Plenum AG, Teklogix (back in the black) and Volt Information Sciences. Satisfactory results came from ComTech Telecomms, Merant and Real Time Control (full-year). Mediocre returns came from IDT Corp (but revenue more than doubled); while very poor results came from Manchester Equipment Company and Wave Technologies (just in the black).
Other financial news included profit warnings from HP (re-structuring charges re spin-off of measurement and test business), Quantum and Yahoo! (GeoCities charge); and share splits from Ameritrade.
Stock movements
Locally
Core Holdings (+29%)
Cyberhost (-25%)
Interconnective Solutions (-21.4%)
PentaCom (+36.4%)
USKO (+20%)
Wentech (-28.6%)
Additionally, Elexir hit a new low for the year on Friday, closing at 50c.
Internationally
At Home (-25.4%)
Asyst Technologies (+24.1%)
Baan (+20.7%)
Merant (+35%)
Progress Software and
Volt Information Sciences (+29%)
Final word
This week sees yet another IT listing, Stella Vista, in the development capital sector of the JSE.
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