Megabuyte - Technology sector intelligence

In our initiation piece on content management software provider to the publishing sector Atex in March last year (Premium Plus subscribers can see here for details), we expressed concern that, whilst the company had shown good top line growth in 2008, this was mainly driven by acquisitions and underlying growth looked to be slowing or even negative. Subsequent to that piece, we were also very interested to see that high profile CEO John Hawkins had left the company earlier this year (see here for details). With this background, we were particularly keen to have a look at Atex’s results for 2009, which have recently been logged at Companies House. Premium subscribers can read our full analysis in Newswire Plus and Premium Plus subscribers can view our updated financial analysis of Atex on the Megabuyte database here.

Spirent sees pick up in spending on LTE development

Anite peer Spirent has released an upbeat IMS for Q3, with trading since early July exceeding management expectations and being above trading in the first half. Spirent’s Performance Analysis division is seeing good performance across the board, including spending on LTE 4G testing. This bodes well for Anite’s Q2, following the company’s own upbeat statement for its Q1 to end July (Premium Plus readers see here). Read our full analysis of the Spirent’s IMS in Newswire Plus.

Financial Services powers return to growth for Cap Gemini in Q3

Paris based IT services player Cap Gemini has reported its quarterly revenues to the market this morning which show a return to growth in Q3 and, in contrast to Logica, a solid performance in the UK market. Cap’s revenues for the three months to September were up 2.5% on an underlying basis to €2.1bn. As with Logica yesterday (see here for details), Financial Services was the driver of improved performance with an amazing 40% jump revenues from this sector in the US. However, in contrast to Logica, which we were surprised to see report an 11% decline in UK revenues, Cap generated growth of 3%. Cap Gemini CEO Paul Hermelin re-iterated the company’s growth ambitions of 3-5% for the second half as a whole. Cap Gemini shares have opened up slightly this morning.

Promising start for Kofax

Enterprise document management specialist Kofax has issued an upbeat IMS this morning suggesting that trading in the first few months of its June 2011 fiscal year has been in line with expectations. Recent trading patterns have continued with the software business continuing to grow whilst the hardware business has declined; in line with expectations. Having said that, profits from the hardware business were actually slightly ahead of expectations due to improved productivity.  In conclusion, CEO Reynolds Bish has re-iterated the board’s view that the software business will grow by around 10% this year. With clear evidence that Kofax had finally sorted out what seemed potentially intractable problems, Kofax shares have responded accordingly and have now risen from a low of 100p in late 2008 to over 250p today.

Sopheon recruiting to meet improving demand

Product management software vendor Sopheon has put out a reasonably upbeat IMS for Q3, though full year revenue visibility has only nudged up marginally to £8.8m, from £8.2m in mid August (Premium Plus readers see here). Nevertheless, with two months yet to go, this is still a much better performance than last year, when the company did £8.3m revenues in total. The improving demand outlook is leading the company to start recruiting again, though cautiously given still unpredictable customer demands and ongoing pricing pressure.