"JetForm lands its largest deal" - Ottawa Citizen
Despite $9M contract with U.S. Navy,
stock drops $2
Scott Cameron
The Ottawa Citizen - March 8, 2000
JetForm Corp. signed one of the largest agreements in its history
yesterday, a three-year, $9-million contract to supply the U.S. navy
with software.
Despite the contract win, however, JetForm stock lost $2 on the
day, closing at $15.75.
Still, that's a far cry from the $6 share price the company was
saddled with as recently as December.
Over the last two weeks in particular, the stock has been on a tear,
almost doubling to $17.75 during midday trading yesterday, from
slightly more than $10 on Feb 24.
The runup is leading executives and analysts to speculate that the
company is firmly on the road to recovery, after a dismal fiscal
1999-2000.
"Last year was a bad year," said JetForm's interim chief executive,
John Gleed.
"Partly it was because of the fact that budgets were being utilized
on solving any Y2K (problems) and testing and making sure that
they had it fixed.
"Also it was fear and uncertainty," Mr. Gleed said.
"We offer solutions to improve processes and communications
within a company, and quite frankly, in the face of the concern of
what Y2K was going to do, that wasn't the priority."
Financial analyst Paul Bradley of Canaccord Capital Corp. said the
navy deal should go a long way to changing the perception that
JetForm's core technology is not up to snuff.
"The military has all the capabilities necessary to evaluate the
packages and the software solutions that are out there, so when
they buy, that tends to be a well considered decision, therefore it is
a bit of a reference site for a software supplier," Mr. Bradley said.
"It's a great deal. This should encourage other people who are
presumably looking at JetForm's technology to go ahead and buy. |
