If there's anything to be gleaned from the quarterly earnings posted this week by content-management vendors Vignette Inc. and Stellent Inc., it's that uncertainty abounds when it comes to spending on content-management systems.

Vignette's fourth-quarter earnings certainly can be considered an anomaly given the recently closed acquisition of portal vendor Epicentric Inc., but the company continues to post significant losses. At least the figures represent a substantial improvement over last year's significant losses. For the quarter ended Dec. 31, Vignette reported a loss of $160.8 million on revenue of $40.4 million, compared with a loss of $966.6 million on revenue of $52.5 million a year ago. For the year, Vignette's loss was $252.8 million on revenue of $155.1 million, compared with a loss of $1.5 billion on revenue of $296.8 million last year.

Just as last year's losses were largely because of a heavy assortment of one-time charges, the latest earnings were marked by $147.3 million in charges related to "impairment of intangible assets." Software licensing revenue, which analysts consider the key gauge of content-management vendors' success, was $18.0 million for the quarter, down from $21.6 million a year ago. The annual drop-off was more dramatic, with licensing revenue down to $62.4 million from $154.4 million last year.

The news was no better from Stellent, which posted losses far in excess of a year earlier. For its third quarter ended Dec. 31, Stellent reported a loss of $7.3 million on revenue of $16.0 million, compared with a loss of $801,000 on revenue of $26.6 million last year. For the first nine months of its fiscal year, Stellent's losses reached $25.8 million, up from $4.9 million for the first three quarters a year ago.

Stellent's quarterly licensing revenue of $9.7 million represented a sharp drop from the $21.6 million posted last year. The year-to-date licensing revenue figure of $30.4 million is just more than half the $58.6 million Stellent had brought in by the same time a year earlier.

The losses mounted despite significant product releases by both vendors. Vignette launched version 7 of its core content-management system during the quarter, while Stellent introduced software for integrating its software with Lotus Notes, a product suite customized for state and local E-government initiatives, and an update to the latest version of its content-management platform.