Iona to post losses for Q1


5 Apr 2007

Despite predicting revenues of US$17m for its first quarter, Irish enterprise software vendor Iona Technologies said that expenses such as operating costs and stock compensation are going to cost the company US$19-19.5m.

The Nasdaq-listed company says it expects its first-quarter cash balance to be between US$55m and US$56m.

Iona chief executive Peter Zotto said the performance reflected the challenge of fitting the company’s business neatly into three-month periods and the fact that certain transactions did not close in the first quarter.

Expecting to close these transactions in the coming quarters, Zotto said the company expects total revenue for the second quarter of 2007 to be in the range of US$20m to US$22m.

“While we are not satisfied with the level of financial performance for the first quarter, our underlying business, and the demand for our products, is strong,” Zotto maintained.

“The Artix business continues to perform well and we achieved, in Q1 year-over-year Artix licence revenue growth of greater than 90pc. Our recent acquisition of C24 and the successful launch of an active Registry/Repository product bring our customers the advanced data services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance capabilities required for performance-demanding SOA deployments.”

Zotto concluded by saying the company has the right strategy and every reason to believe it will continue with the same growth trajectory it expected going into 2007.

By John Kennedy