Acquisition Boosts Business Objects 2

Business Objects SA is suddenly a much larger company. Reporting its first complete quarter after acquiring Crystal Decisions Inc. in December, the business-intelligence software vendor said total revenue for the first quarter was $217.2 million, up 83% from the same period one year ago.

The acquisition allows Business Objects to leapfrog in size archrival Cognos Inc., which recently reported fourth-quarter sales of $202.1 million. Although some of the growth was because of increased sales of Business Objects' original product line, CEO Bernard Liautaud said most of the sales growth was because of the addition of Crystal Decisions.

Net income for the quarter ended March 31 was $3.3 million, or 4 cents per share, down from $8.8 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier because of purchase accounting adjustments and other costs associated with the acquisition.

License revenue, a key growth indicator, was up 104% to $114.5 million, also largely because of the acquisition. That included seven deals with software licenses valued at more than $1 million. The company reported that sales of query, analysis, and reporting software were $102 million in the quarter. Performance-management and analytic-application sales were $8.1 million, and data-integration product sales were $4.3 million.

For the current quarter, the company is predicting revenue in the range of $220 million to $225 million and earnings of 7 to 10 cents per share. For the year, revenue is expected to be approximately $935 million.