More international acquisitions

The two acquisitions by Microsoft, Visio and Softway Systems dominated the international IT world last week, with the latter possibly being Microsoft`s first tangible acknowledgement of the need for interoperability between the Windows and Unix regimes.

At home, the continuing woes of The Connection Group seems to have had most prominence in the local media.

At home, the continuing woes of The Connection Group seems to have had most prominence in the local media.

• we saw the satisfactory listing of ERP.com in the venture capital sector of the JSE;

• very good year-end (maiden) results from Faritec;

• good year-end numbers from Kunene Technology;

• the news from the JSE that the listing of the securities of The Connection Group was now under threat of suspension and possible termination, following its non-submission of its preliminary report timeously; and

• Prism Holdings listing its shares online, the first South African company to do so.

Additionally, it seems that Prescient, the investment group, is to significantly strengthen its IT arm, with a strong focus on business intelligence and e-commerce.

[Local]

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

Local Cautionary Notices (see attachment).

Local Listing calendar (see attachment).

Other local news included:

• profit warnings from Micrologix (loss) and Whetstone;

• the announcement that LogTek will change its name to Conlog Holdings; and

• Billcad Holdings plans to change its name to Planit Technologies, following the sell-off of its construction division and Billtech to Orbes Solutions.

• we heard that 3Com is restructuring, with the intention that the Palm Computing unit becomes a separate and independent trading company;

• Security Dynamics is changing its name to RSA Security;

• Qualcomm is looking for a buyer for its terrestrial-based mobile phone business; and

• Telecom New Zealand is bidding for Australia`s third largest telecommunications provider AAPT, in which it already has a 19.8% stake.

[International]

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

Other international news included:

• the announcement from Toshiba that it is shedding nearly 5 000 jobs;

• Seagate is disposing of 8 000 staff;

• AT&T has a staffing freeze and also looks set to trim its staff complement; and

• AT&T and British Telecom announced a worldwide mobile communications alliance.

We saw excellent figures from American Nortel Comms, Capri and Rage Software.

Losses came from Baltimore Technologies, Circuit Systems, Datrontech Group, Dunn Computer, Franklin Telecom, LibertyOne (Australia), Manugistics, MicroAge, Network Technology, Tektronix, Tibco Software and TigrSoft.

Good numbers were recorded by Adobe (better than expected), Financial Objects, Great Plains Software, Hays, Jabil Circuit, NetBenefit, Oracle (below expectations), Progress Software, Solectron, Telecom Italia Mobile SpA and Trend Micro. Satisfactory results were reported by France Telecom SA, Geac and Wallace Computer Services.

Mediocre returns came from Telecom Italia, while very poor results came from Psion.

Other financial news included profit warnings from NEC, PairGain, Toshiba and (unofficially) Xerox; share split announcements from Adobe, Sun Microsystems and Vitesse Semiconductor; and an impressive IPO debut by Net Silicon, a provider of embedded networking systems.

Locally

Acuity (-25.4%)
Brainware (-19%)
Dectronic (-18.9%)
I-Solution (-18.6%)
ITech (-28%)
M-Web (+20.3%)
MBTech (+21.8%)

OSI (-18.6%)
PentaCom (+50%)
Pinnacle (+32.3%)
Synergy (-27.3%)
Wentech (-18.2%)
Y2KTec (+25%)
Zaptronix (+40%)

Internationally

Datapoint (-25%)
Infinium (+27.1%)
Manugistics (-19.2%)
NCR (-18.6%)
Visio (+22.5%)

As we approach the year 2000, less confidence in being able to handle the situation properly and completely is the message starting to emanate from many large corporate organisations.

The Cobol-oriented 9999 problem definitely affected some local companies, and many others are freezing code changes to their systems from either the end of September or the end of October, until well into the new year.

The impact of this on the sales figures of many IT companies in the closing months of 1999 and the opening months of 2000 will be severe, and will add increasing pressure to the achievement of their bottom-line numbers. This is very bad news for several of the development and venture capital sector IT companies, and could exasperate many already tenuous situations.