Shareholders OK Poison Pill At Canada's Corel
TORONTO (Reuters) - Shareholders of Canadian software maker Corel Corp. (Nasdaq:COSFF - news) voted 87.8 percent in favor of installing a shareholder rights plan at the company's annual meeting Wednesday.
The plan was unveiled on February 11 following persistent rumors that Ottawa-based Corel had been approached with a takeover offer by California-based Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:ADBE - news)
Corel management denied that the company, a small designer that has gone toe to toe with Goliath Microsoft Corp. in the office suite market, had been a takeover target for Adobe, the world's largest maker of digital publishing software.
During the meeting, an audio portion of which was broadcast over the Internet, Chief Executive and founder Michael Cowpland was upbeat about Corel's prospects in the upcoming months despite the company's intermittent flows of red ink over the past few quarters.
''We're very confident about this quarter and the quarters ahead,'' he said, his reedy voice crackling over the Internet on the company's Web site.
This year Corel will unveil a slew of product updates, which management said will boost sales.
According to Corel, its flagship WordPerfect office suite has 22 million U.S. users, up 10 percent in the last 12 months, compared with 44 million for Microsoft's rival product Word. ''This is great news. It shows we've turned the tide,'' Cowpland said. ''And we think we'll do far better than this in the months ahead.''
Corel shares closed C$0.04 lower at C$4.51 on the Toronto Stock Exchange Wednesday. Their 52-week high is C$8.05.
($1-$1.49 Canadian)
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