earnings play, PRGS...2:1 stock split...record revs
Progress Software Reports Record Fourth Quarter
Financial Results and Announces Two-for-One Stock
Split
Company Finishes Fiscal Year with Record $286 Million in Revenue and Record Earnings Per
Share of $1.78
BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 17, 1999-- Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ:PRGS - news), a
leading supplier of application development, deployment and management solutions, today announced record results in revenue,
operating income and earnings per share for its fourth quarter and full fiscal year ended November 30, 1999. Revenue for the
quarter increased 13 percent to $78.1 million, up from $69.2 million in the same quarter last year. Operating income for the
fourth quarter of 1999 was $16.0 million and net income was $11.8 million, up from $11.3 million and $8.4 million,
respectively, in the same quarter last year. Diluted earnings per share of $0.60 represented an increase of 40 percent over the
$0.43 achieved in the fourth quarter of 1998.
Progress Software also announced its board of directors has approved a two-for-one stock split of its common stock that will
be effected as a 100 percent stock dividend. Shareholders of record at the close of business on January 7, 2000 will be entitled
to one additional share for every share of common stock held on that date. The distribution date will be January 21, 2000.
For the twelve months ended November 30, 1999, revenue increased 19 percent to $286.1 million from $239.9 million in
1998. Operating income increased 56 percent to $46.7 million from $30.0 million in 1998. Net income increased 54 percent to
$35.0 million from $22.8 million in 1998 and diluted earnings per share increased 51 percent to $1.78 from $1.18 in 1998.
The company's revenue was adversely affected by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar during the fourth quarter and full fiscal
year of 1999 as compared to 1998. On a constant currency basis, revenue in the fourth quarter grew by 19 percent as
compared to the fourth quarter of 1998. On a constant currency basis, revenue for the full fiscal year grew by 23 percent for
fiscal 1999 as compared to fiscal 1998.
During the fourth quarter, the company purchased approximately 33,000 shares of its stock at a cost of $1.0 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 $91.8 million. The company's cash and short-term investments at the end of the year totaled a
record $158.7 million. The company's accounts receivable days sales outstanding was 55 days at year-end as compared to 53
days a year ago.
''Our financial results were driven by the fact that our Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) sold more applications than ever
before. Additionally, between our traditional business and the recent boom in the emerging Application Service Provider (ASP)
market, Progress Software has added several hundred new partners to our selling channel overall,'' said Progress Software
President Joseph W. Alsop. ''The establishment of an entirely new application delivery model and the increased demand for
our Internet-based products has made this a great year for Progress Software and the thousands of ASP/ISVs that build
business applications with our technology.''
Company Milestones in 1999
Progress Software achieved several milestones during the year. The company began 1999 by outlining its vision of the future of
business applications and the Web and mid-year gained the dominant position in the fast-growing ASP market.
Chief among Progress Software's accomplishments this year include:
Progress Software was first to market with a complete set of products, technologies and partnerships to enable ISVs to
convert their applications to an entirely new distribution method, that of the ASP model. ASP applications are available on a
pay-as-you-go, subscription basis rather than purchased and are accessed over the Internet.
This allows small and mid-tier organizations to more quickly and economically gain access to application functionality previously
unavailable to them. In May 1999, Progress Software launched its ASPEN(TM)Program, which now boasts over 150
members, representing the largest global ASP force in the industry.
Also in the quarter the company introduced Progress® SonicMQ(TM), an Internet resilient messaging server based on the
Java Messaging Service specifications. With this introduction, the company deepened its Internet product offerings and
continued to deliver on its long-term Universal Application Architecture (UAA) strategy. Progress SonicMQ - the first available
standalone message server, based on JMS, from a major software vendor - gives developers a way to meet increasing
scalability requirements for business-to-business e-commerce applications as well as addressing needs for application
integration with unique XML capabilities.
Progress Software's enterprise RDBMS database strengthened its lead as the most widely used embedded database. The
latest version of the RDBMS supports twice the number of concurrent users, supports databases of up to 100 petabytes and
increases linear scalability to eight million transactions per day. For the second consecutive year Progress Software was named
#1 in the embedded database market by Dataquest - a division of the Gartner Group - which identified it as the leading vendor
in the expanding U.S. embedded database market with a 19 percent market share, ahead of such companies as Oracle and
Sybase.
Full details on the company's corporate and product announcements are included on the Web at www.progress.com. For more
information on the ASP market and Progress Software's ASPEN Program, visit www.ASPconnections.com.
About Progress Software
Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS - news) is a global supplier of software products and services for
developing, deploying and managing business solutions across all computing and network environments. Our products, which
are installed in over 60% of Fortune 100 companies, include application servers, databases, development tools and application
management products for Internet/Web, extranet and intranet applications.
Our customers operate in 100 countries, are supported by more than 1,300 employees worldwide, and deploy annually over
$2 billion in Progress-based applications built by more than 2,000 independent software vendors (ISVs). For more
information, visit www.progress.com or +1-781-280-4000.
Progress and WebSpeed are registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation. SonicMQ, Progress RDBMS and
other products of Progress Software referenced herein are trademarks of Progress Software Corporation. All other
trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
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Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations
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