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Strategies & Market Trends : The Thread Formerly Known as No Rest For The Wicked -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DO$Kapital who wrote (59782)	9/15/1999 9:41:00 AM
From: Bald Eagle	Respond to of 90042

Look near bottom for CS connection. BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 15, 1999--Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ:PRGS), a leading supplier of application development, deployment and management products, today reported results for its third quarter, ended August 31, 1999. Revenue for the quarter increased 18 percent to $70.2 million, up from $59.5 million in the same quarter of last year. Operating income for the third quarter of 1999 was $10.6 million and represented an increase of 33 percent over the same quarter in 1998. Net income was $8.3 million, up 34 percent from $6.2 million in the same quarter last year. Diluted earnings per share of $0.43 represented an increase of 39 percent over the $0.31 achieved in the third quarter of 1998. The company's revenue was adversely affected by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar during 1999 as compared to 1998. On a constant currency basis, revenue in the third quarter grew by 22 percent as compared to the third quarter of 1998. During the third quarter, the company purchased approximately 62,000 shares of its stock at a cost of $1.4 million. Since beginning its share buybacks in the first quarter of 1996, the company has purchased approximately 5.8 million shares of its common stock at a cost of $90.8 million. The company's cash and short-term investments at the end of the quarter totaled $130 million. The company's accounts receivable days sales outstanding was 50 days at quarter end, down five days from the period one year ago. "Progress Software continues to be a solid business achieving positive financial results during a turbulent time in the software industry," said President Joseph W. Alsop. "The demand for flexible, high-functionality business applications, coupled with the business imperatives of Internet-enabling existing applications and the option of renting new applications to take full advantage of the revolutionary connective capabilities of the Internet, continue to drive growth in our customer and partner communities." Quarterly Highlights The company continued to strengthen its position in the rapidly emerging application service provider (ASP) market with the formation of a new ASP Business Unit and the addition to its ASPEN program of Web-TRACS.COM, a provider of Web-based IT asset management solutions. The ASPEN program enables Progress Software's independent software vendors (ISVs) to reach new markets and new end-users via rentable packaged applications and services. Small and mid-sized companies may now rent best-of-breed, Progress(R)-based applications without making up-front investments in internal IT systems or staff. With the required ASP partnership infrastructure already in place, Progress Software is firmly positioned to bring its ISVs and their more than 5,000 Progress-based applications to this new distribution model. Also in the quarter, Progress(R) Apptivity(tm) was recognized as being 50-to-100 percent faster than its nearest Java competitor in a benchmark test published in a recent edition of PCWeek magazine. Apptivity scored highest of all the participating Java Application Servers in the test's two measures: handling large numbers of concurrent users and generating dynamic Web pages, and was credited with offering near linear scalability. High performance and scalability are essential for Java application servers to meet the needs of e-commerce and business-to-business applications. Progress Software also announced a licensing agreement with SPECTRUM, a division of Cabletron Systems (NYSE: CS) and a leading provider of network management software. Progress Software will license its Progress(R)IPQoS(tm) Quality of Service (QoS) tool to complement SPECTRUM's portfolio of service-level management solutions. Progress IPQoS is the only embedded application and resource monitoring tool that supports and integrates with Simple Network Management Protocol-based products.