Earnings Round Up

Siebel Systems reported its sales and earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2003. Revenues for the second quarter of 2003 were $333.3 million compared to previous second quarter revenues of $405 million, a 21 percent decline. Net income was $9.8 million, a 60 percent decrease from the previous second quarter. Revenues from license fees for the second quarter of 2003 were $110 million, a 35 percent decrease over the previous second quarter. As previously reported Siebel Systems has initiated a restructuring plan that it expects will enable the company to achieve a 15 percent operating margin at roughly current revenue levels. Measures include a workforce reduction of approximately 490 employees; consolidation or elimination of certain facilities; reduction of depreciation expenses through retirement of some assets; and migration of some business operations offshore. The company expects to end the third quarter with approximately 5,000 employees. "At a strategic level we believe Siebel has three choices: sell itself to a larger vendor like Microsoft, Oracle, or IBM, broaden its own footprint through acquisition, or bide its time until it can release a new version of its software that runs on commercial application servers based on J2EE and .NET," says Patrick Walravens, managing director and senior research analyst at JMP Securities.

Chordiant reported revenues for the second quarter of 2003 ended June 30 of $17.1 million, an increase of 24 percent from the $13.8 million reported for the first quarter of 2003, and an increase of 13 percent from the $15.1 million reported for the second quarter of 2002. Net loss was $3.4 million, compared to a net loss of $10.5 million for the second quarter of 2002. Walravens says the company is set for even better performance: "Chordiant's strategy of swinging for the fences paid off in Q2, as Chordiant closed multimillion-dollar deals with CIBC's credit card division and the Royal Bank of Scotland--one of the world's top-five banks by market value."

KANA, which saw promising growth in previous quarters, saw a net loss for the second quarter ended June 30 of $9.9 million and saw revenues of $12 million, a 28 percent drop from the previous second quarter. "Second quarter revenue results were clearly unacceptable," Chuck Bay, CEO of KANA, said in a statement. "However, our innovative engineering outsourcing strategy enabled us to adjust expense-side changes, without jeopardizing our leadership position in eCRM products and solutions. In addition, I strongly support our sales management team in their continued commitment to absolute customer satisfaction."

Ascential Software saw some positive numbers for the second quarter ended June 30. Revenue was $39.9 million, up 43 percent from $28.0 million in the second quarter of last year. License revenue was $21.0 million, up 39 percent from $15.1 million in license revenue reported in the second quarter of 2002. Net income was $700,000, compared to a net loss of $20.6 million in the second quarter of 2002, and a net loss of $0.5 million in the first quarter of 2003. "Ascential continues to benefit, in our opinion, from its decision to focus on data integration solutions," JMP Securities' Walravens says.