Iona’s figures remain poor
Revenues for the three months to June were $15.2 million (€12.3m), which was 7% lower than the same period last year and almost 20% short of analyst forecasts. The company had flagged the drop in sales in a profit warning earlier this month, which caused the share price to drop 20%. Poor take-up of Iona’s new Artix product was blamed for the failure to meet the market’s expectations.
Iona co-founder and chief executive Chris Horn said yesterday that he remained confident in the long-term success of the company’s product offering. Dr Horn said information technology managers in Iona’s client companies had been “more cautious than anticipated” and had held off on spending on new technologies such as Artix.
“Nonetheless, Iona remains a strong company that is well-positioned to help its customers derive new business value from their installed IT assets,” said Dr Horn.
The company recorded a net loss of $1.9m after making a small profit of $190,000 in the previous quarter. The net loss per share was 5c, in line with analysts’ forecasts that were revised in light of the profit warning. But the company’s losses were sharply ahead of the $25m deficit in the second quarter of 2003.
Chief financial officer Dan Demmer said Iona was doing all that was necessary to achieve a “sustainable performance”. Mr Demmer said the company’s Corba product, which also improves businesses’ IT integration and accounts for more than 90% of sales, continued to generate cash.
