Sybase Reports 15% Revenue Growth To Record Level

Sybase on Wednesday reported strong growth in its core relational database system, its warehouse database server, and its mobile products resulted in revenue growth of 15% in its second quarter compared with the same quarter a year ago.

Revenue was $282.7 million, compared with $245 million last year.

Its pace of growth exceeded the 12.6% rate of growth for the database market as a whole during 2007 and most of its relational database competitors last year, though Sybase has a much smaller share of the market than Oracle, IBM, or Microsoft. Microsoft's SQL Server was the fastest-growing system by revenue in 2007 at a rate of 14% and represents 18.5% of an $18.8 billion market. Sybase holds 3.5% of the market.

Sybase license revenue, a leading indicator for database vendors, was up 17% to $90.5 million year over year for the second quarter ended June 30. License revenue represents new systems sold, while maintenance revenue, often grouped under "services," is a renewable source year after year. Services revenue was up 8% to $146.6 million, said John Chen, chairman, CEO, and president.

"We have now delivered three consecutive record quarters," Chen noted in announcing the results.

Sybase is a market leader in mobile databases and synchronizing mobile databases through its messaging system and mobile middleware. Messaging revenue grew 41% to $45.6 million.

Sybase said its IQ analytics server, a column-oriented database system that produces data warehouse-type results faster than standard systems, was one of its fastest-growing product segments in 2007. Results for IQ analytics server in the second quarter 2008 were not broken out.

Chen attributed Sybase's resurgence after years of stagnant or declining growth to "our unwired enterprise strategy ... additional growth catalysts include new offerings such as risk analytics, data clustering, Mobile Office, mobile banking and next-generation mobile messaging."

Sybase management raised guidance on 2008 revenue, earnings, and cash flow due to the stronger than expected second-quarter performance. It is anticipating total revenue around $1.1 billion with earnings per share of $1.98 to $2. Cash flow from operations is expected to be $250 million, Chen said.