Iona’s figures remain poor

THE misery continued for shareholders in Iona Technologies yesterday as the software firm’s share price dipped a further 5% after disappointing second quarter sales figures, before recovering in late trading.

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.