Ascential Reports First Independent Profit

Ascential Software Corp. Tuesday reported its first profit as an independent company in the second quarter ended June 30. The profit came on a 43% surge in revenue that included strong sales of the company's data-integration and data-transformation software. CEO Peter Gyenes says integration technologies are high on the shopping lists of many IT executives today.

Ascential reported net income of $695,000 or 1 cent per share for the quarter, compared with a $20.6 million loss (33 cents per share) in the same period one year ago. It was Ascential's first profit (using generally accepted accounting principles) since the company was created in July 2001. Ascential was spun off from database vendor Informix Corp. when IBM acquired Informix.

Sales for the quarter were $39.9 million, up 43% from one year ago. Those numbers included a 39% gain in license revenue to $21.0 million and a 47% gain in service-related revenue to $18.9 million. It was the company's fifth consecutive quarter of revenue growth.

Revenue for all of 2003 is now projected to grow between 35% and 38% over the $113.0 million revenue reported for 2002. The company expects to report a profit for the year. Revenue in the current quarter will be "appreciably higher" than in the same period last year, the company said.