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Technology Stocks : SAP A.G. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: P.M.Freedman who wrote (3167)	4/21/1999 2:28:00 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3424

PeopleSoft's Earnings Tumble Amid Downturn in ERP Market By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter PeopleSoft Inc. posted earnings that were in line with analysts' diminished expectations, but much lower than a year ago on a downturn in the market for enterprise software. For the first quarter, the Pleasanton, Calif., maker of large-scale business software packages posted a loss of $171.5 million, or 73 cents a share, compared with earnings of $33.8 million, or 13 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. Excluding extraordinary charges, PeopleSoft reported income of $7.6 million, or three cents a diluted share. Analysts surveyed by First Call had expected earnings of two cents a share. The special charges consisted of $176.4 million in connection with the spin-off of Momentum Business Applications Inc. and $4.4 million for charges related to a previously announced workforce reduction that was completed in the quarter. Revenue, meanwhile, totaled $305.4 million, 10% higher than the $277.7 million reported in the first quarter of 1998. Last month, PeopleSoft warned it would report lower-than-expected first-quarter revenue due to an industrywide slowdown in customer demand. PeopleSoft was once one of the fastest-growing companies in so-called enterprise resource planning, or ERP, software. But that market has been suffering from a number of maladies, including the possibility that big companies are reluctant to spend money on these systems just ahead of the year 2000 since the millennium bug has companies nervous about their existing systems' readiness. "The entire enterprise-software market is in a difficult period at this time, but our win rate against our competitors continues to be strong," said Al Castino, PeopleSoft's chief financial officer. ERP systems, which cover management of everything from payroll to inventory management, and are also used to plan business scenarios, are complex software packages. Suppliers like PeopleSoft are in the process of revamping their products to include more Internet-style applications, and some have fewer new products to sell at the moment than they normally do. Other ERP companies that have reported problems include J.D. Edwards & Co., which has warned of poor earnings for its fiscal first quarter, and Oracle Corp., whose stock fell last month after the company reported slowing sales.