IFMX - Investment Discussion Message Board

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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion

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To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (14013)	4/21/2000 12:07:00 PM
From: Logain Ablar	Read Replies (2) of 14631

Hi Harry: Here are my notes from the call. My impression is they did a good job considering some of the hurdles they had this quarter. The sign of good management is when things are adverse and you still come through. Of course you can tell management still needs to work on their presentation and sales skills. INFORMIX CONFERENCE CALL NOTES. For those not having a chance to listen. investor.informix.com 1) Call started a few minutes late and the slide presentation was not available for the live call (at least it wasn?t when I accessed the site @ 5 when the call started). It was apparent a few of the analysts asking questions didn?t have the slides. 2) Jean Yves Dexmier CEO and Charles Kane CFO 3) Started with normal disclaimers. 4) Jean-Yves discussed the business & Charles discussed the financials. Then we had the Q&A period. Jean-Yves tried to paint a picture of the company having a great quarter (I say tried cause we all know the street just focused on the lower than expected revenue growth). Jean-Yves was quite positive and emphasized the 80 new accounts, 50 new customers, the Mexico & China wins (where the revenue is back loaded and not in the quarter results) the products implementation (less than 12 weeks with Universal Studios Japan up in 6) and scalability (handling 100M hits a day). Jean-Yves is getting better at his presentations. This was better than year end. Still not as clear as others but it?s the #?s and forward #?s that count. A good point was the I.Economy products generated $100M in revenue for the 1st time. (Shows new product acceptance). Indicated strong momentum in the 1st quarter and they see strong momentum going forward with the new products. International presence is very strong. (US is not doing as well). Mentioned some customer wins (GAP, Vodaphone, a couple of others). Europe over 20% growth on local currency basis (less with F/X). Company?s strength is in reality not perception. They have to improve the perception. Chuck discussed the financials. Financials were good except for a few items. Good points. Cash increased by 31+ million. Sales increased by 10% (of course we can take this as a bad point to). Expenses increased but we can expect to see a leveling out throughout the year. Other income ? two components - 4M investment (last year they had debt and this was small) and $2.5 on sale of MSFT stock (that they had acquired when MSFT acquired co?s. they had invested in. Margins improved (I didn?t catch the exact %, gross over 70, net over 10) Tax rate 20%. Bad points. DSO?s @ 89 (This was one of the dropped shoes). Expect it to go down to 78 next qtr and continue to decrease (not sure what it was @ year end). F/X loss from strengthening $$. $4.1 vs. last qtr and 8.6M. vs. last year 1st qtr. Customer advances (this is the area of concern). In licensing revenue but only $7.? And they had forecasted it to be higher (almost double). This is part of the problem with North America revenue. They do expect the other income to offset any short fall this year. This was a big time miss. From the CC I felt Jean-Yves didn?t realize the #?s were that bad. He missed the opportunity to help guide the street going forward (at least saying they are comfortable with forecasts). As an alternative (since the company doesn?t like to help guide in public) they should have reemphasized during the Q&A the 1st quarter is the weakest, the Ardent transaction was neutral in Q1 and they expect it to be acreative going forward. Its over now and we?ll have to wait for the company to continue to execute. Management needs to learn how to sell the stock as well as sell the product. I don?t mean hype the stock but there is a way to manage the street (of course you do need to execute). Jean-Yves mentioned they are strong at reality poor at perception. While he was meaning the products he again showed he is not yet a salesman. Some of the detail #?s won?t be available till the 10Q (on actual revenue and expenses by business group). Tim

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