DataMirror six-month results
DataMirror Corp DMC
Shares issued 10,360,060 1999-08-23 close $4.95
Tuesday Aug 24 1999
Mr. Nigel Stokes reports
Revenue for the second quarter ended July 31, 1999, was $10,144,000, the highest quarterly revenue in the company's history with licence revenue 42 per cent higher than for the quarter ended April 30, 1999. The net loss for the quarter (including DataMirror's pro rata share of losses incurred by PointBase, Inc.) was $898,000 or nine cents per share as compared with a loss of $2,849,000 or 28 cents per share for the quarter ended April 30, 1999. Operating expenses have decreased for the second consecutive quarter. Cash from operating activities of $1,023,000 was an improvement of $1,921,000 from the previous quarter. The weighted average number of common shares outstanding for the quarter was 10,188,000 as compared with 10,352,000 for the same period last year.
Without the equity loss of PointBase, the company would have reported net income for the quarter of $101,000 or one cent per share as compared with a net loss of $2,174,000 or 21 cents per share for the quarter ended April 30, 1999. The equity loss of PointBase is not deductible for income tax purposes nor does it involve an outlay of cash resources. Even though the accounting treatment followed for the company's investment in PointBase effectively writes down the carrying value as a charge to earnings, management believes the value of this investment is increasing. PointBase has now started to generate revenue.
Revenue for the six months ended July 31, 1999, was $18,230,000, compared with $14,032,000 for the same period last year, an increase of 30 per cent, and $8,382,000 for the same period in the 1998 fiscal year, an increase of 118 per cent. The first six months of the fiscal year contributed 42 per cent and 38 per cent to the company's annual revenue totals in fiscal 1999 and 1998.
"The business outlook improved during the quarter," said Nigel Stokes, chairman, president and chief executive officer of DataMirror. "With our sales growth and flattening out of expenses, we improved our operating income by $2.7-million from the previous quarter. Business from new customers increased during the quarter. New accounts contributed 75 per cent of our licence revenue, up from 59 per cent in the previous quarter. Channel contribution was particularly strong accounting for 34 per cent of licence revenue and half of our over 80 new customers.
"Our customers continue to recognize the value proposition of enterprise data integration -- the ability to transform, move and synchronize data to link multiplatform production data stores or integrate new technologies. In particular, significant business drivers are software infrastructure for e-business sites and the increasing demand for resiliency or back-up and recovery solutions."
"More and more customers are using our products as the replication infrastructure for .com applications. Approximately 24 per cent of our Transformation Server sales were for e-business applications. DataMirror Transformation Server can provide full data integration of operational systems with e-business applications. Our open system approach provides real time movement and synchronization of data stores affected by e-business transactions, on a wide variety of platform or database environments. Customers who have purchased the company's products for e-business infrastructure include A. Daigger Corporation, ADT Automotive, Barnes & Noble, CHS Electronics, Debenhams Retail, GE Capital Railcar Services, Harley-Davidson, Manheim Auctions, Maytag Appliances, MCL Group (Mazda U.K.), Playboy Enterprises, RayBan, Southern Clay Products, Thomas Miller & Co. and Wallenius Lines.
"Resiliency and recovery software continues to be in high demand for a variety of mission-critical applications including e-business. Industry awareness of the need for resilient e-business sites has been highlighted in recent months. Together with DataMirror's High Availability Suite, the new IBM AS/400 e-series is extremely well positioned for hosting continuously available e-business Web sites. We have also had strong interest in our competitive upgrade program for high-availability software. Since its release late last year, more than 275 licences of high-availability suite have been sold to over 100 customers, most of whom were new customers.
"Our own e-business initiative has been a considerable success. Since March, over 400 product downloads www.datamirror.com were generated from our Web site. Both existing and prospective customers have commented on the advantages of being able to download software from the site and to obtain, on a self-service basis, their own authorization codes and product information. For middleware software, we believe we are the leaders in providing this level of fulfilment directly over the Internet," added Mr. Stokes.
New customers during the quarter included Big 5 Sporting Goods, Capital Radio, Castrol North America, Charles Schwab Europe, CHS Electronics, Danfoss Interservices, Debenhams Retail, DG Diskontbank, Frontier Information Technology, GE Capital Railcar Services, Gustaf Kahr, Haggar Apparel, HVB America, Invesco Bank Deutschland, Lohmann & Rauscher, Maytag Appliances, MediaOne, Missouri Department of Corrections, Reckitt & Colman and R.R. Donnely.
Of a total staff complement of 218 at July 31, 1999, 119 were in sales, marketing and support; 68 in research and development; and 31 in general and administration roles. At quarter-end, the company's staff count was 21 per cent higher than staff levels at July 31, 1998.
New technology
During the quarter, the company announced the following new software releases:
Enterprise Administrator for Transformation Server was released for Oracle, Sybase and DB2 on S/390. Featuring a common graphical interface written completely in Java, Enterprise Administrator permits users to manage Transformation Server across all major database systems from a single location. Users can set up tables, specify movement parameters and start full refresh, periodic net-change replication or real-time data mirroring. Overall system performance has been improved by off-loading administrative functions from production systems to the portable and platform independent Enterprise Administrator. Further releases of this product are planned to enable browser-based, install-free configuration of Transformation Server via an intranet, extranet or over the Internet.
Transformation Server for Oracle on Linux was released to integrate Oracle databases on Linux with data residing on Microsoft NT, UNIX, IBM AS/400 and S/390. Linux, with over 700,000 server licences installed in 1998 alone, is the fastest growing server operating environment.
iCluster for IBM AS/400 Cluster Management was launched to provide high-availability applications for e-business and other business-critical applications complementing IBM's AS/400 clustering solution. Customers can use iCluster to manage all systems in an AS/400 cluster and monitor all critical data and applications from a single workstation. High Availability Suite is being engineered to provide an intuitive graphical interface to manage IBM AS/400 clusters as well as to provide increased levels of data and application resiliency.
iDeliver, a new replication and transformation technology for delivering real-time data to the desktop, was commercially launched at the Microsoft TECH-ED conference in Dallas, Tex. Working with Transformation Server, iDeliver can receive and distribute information from Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase and IBM DB2 database systems directly into desktop spreadsheets, such as Microsoft Excel, or other data stores such as Microsoft Access, and automatically update only the records that have changed on the remote systems. Finding, using and keeping valuable production data up-to-date is maintained from a secure Web-based publication directory that serves as a business portal to information dispersed across a corporate network. |
