Sybase Closes Books On Record Year; Mobile Offerings Expanded

IBM, Oracle and Microsoft dominate the enterprise database market, but the oft slighted Sybase turned in a record performance in 2006 as well. The company on Thursday said its revenues rose 7% to $876 million compared to $819 million in 2005. New Sybase license revenue, an indicator of health for software companies, represented $327 million or 37% of the total. Earnings per share were up 11% to $1.03 versus $.92 in 2005. Net income increased 11% to $95 million compared to $86 million the year before, according to generally accepted accounting principles.

CEO John Chen said the figures represented an operating margin of 20% or a record high for Sybase and "our strongest year since I have been at the company." Chen joined Sybase as chairman, president and CEO in 1998. He said Sybase expects to cross the $1 billion mark in revenues in 2007.

Chen said growth in 2006 was driven primarily by sales of Sybase's Adaptive Server Enterprise relational database system and its Sybase IQ Analytics data analysis system; the pair made up 70% of Sybase license revenue in 2005. ASE revenues were up 30%; IQ Analytics revenues were up 22%.

In addition, Sybase saw increased sales in its iAnywhere Suite of mobility and synchronized database operation software. This branch of its business represented 30% of revenues in 2005, according to its10K filing with the SEC in 2006.

Sybase in November completed its acquisition of Mobile 365 for $397 million and created a Sybase 365 subsidiary based on it. Sybase 365 is a leading interoperator for messaging systems between mobile devices and delivers 3.5 billion messages per month.

Sybase updated its OneBridge 5.5 component of iAnywhere Suite as a platform for extending enterprise applications to mobile workers and integrated its Afaria 5.5 device and security management software into OneBridge so the difficult task of extending enterprise applications to mobile devices can be eased. Afaria software can interface to 130 mobile devices.

"We are now the world's largest mobile enterprise software and services provider," said Chen in the year-end earnings announcement.

Sybase spent $13.6 million in meeting new compliance regulations in $2006.