Progress boosts 2Q revenue 7%, earnings 83%

Progress Software has grown revenues for the second quarter of 2008 by 7%, lifting revenues to $128 million, as against $120 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2007.

On a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis, operating income increased 83% to $20.6 million from $11.3 million a year ago. Net income increased 72% to $14.5 million from $8.4 million in the same quarter last year. Diluted earnings per share increased 74% to 33 cents from 19 cents in the second quarter of fiscal 2007.

Joseph Alsop, co-founder and CEO of Progress Software, says: "Our overall revenue results were solid, with strong profitability. While our DataDirect product line and our overall product licence revenue were below our expectations, growth in our OpenEdge and Enterprise Infrastructure product lines was in line with our expectations, with particularly strong growth in our Apama product line."

Quarterly highlights

* Farmers Alliance Mutual Insurance Company (FAMI), a leading mid-Western property and casualty insurance carrier, is to deploy Progress Sonic ESB in order to streamline its enterprise (IT) infrastructure using a SOA framework and integrate several discrete applications, which are dispersed across various platforms. FAMI is undergoing a multi-year cost optimisation project in its IT environment and regards the Sonic ESB as an integral part of its ability to reduce costs).

* Nordisk Mobiltelefon (NMT) is using the Progress Sonic ESB and Progress DataXtend Semantic Integrator to support the rollout and standards-based integration of its operational and business support applications (OSS/BSS).

* ING Wholesale Banking is delivering algorithmic trading capabilities for emerging markets using the Progress Apama complex event processing (CEP) platform. ING will bring a combination of algorithmic trading capabilities and direct access to emerging European markets to its customers. The technology behind the service uses proprietary algorithms built using the Progress Apama) algorithmic trading platform. Detica Group plc (DCA.L), the specialist business and technology consultancy, and Progress Software jointly announced the launch of the Detica Market Surveillance Accelerator powered by the Apama CEP platform.

* Progress announced the OpenEdge 10.1 business application development platform. With this release OpenEdge becomes the first business application development platform to support IPv6, a next generation Internet protocol designed to bring superior reliability, flexibility and security to the Internet. Other large vendors failed to reach this key government-regulated milestone at the time of the 15 April 2008 press announcement, and in some cases were forced to recall products that were originally billed as IPv6-compliant (www.progress.com/openedge101C).

Progress Software South Africa experienced above-average growth in the second quarter and for the first half year, reports MD Rick Parry: "We grew 18% in this period, and for the full six-month period," says Parry. "This was mainly due to growth in our software-as-a-service revenues, a performance which underscores the wisdom of our approach in South Africa.

"In this market, we have been world leaders in the design, deployment and take-up of software as a service, a fact which has helped us grow our business the last five years. Our partners and their clients are delighted to be presented with a business model that defers up-front expense, shares risk and amortises software cost over a period of time. We fully expect to maintain our growth rate due to our innovative business model."