At the company’s annual meeting, executives from CGI Informatique SA, developer of the Pacbase software engineering system, said fiscal 1993 has so far not lived up to expectations, and indicated that the company will be considering either an acquisition or joint venture in the facilities management market. We had hoped that the end of the year – 1992 – which is the first part of our financial year (CGI ends its fiscal year on August 31), would signal a recovery, but although the first two months – September and October – improved on the year before, they were followed by November and December, which were less and less good, said Robert Mallet, president-director general of the group. For 1993, we hope to maintain our revenues and profit with last year’s level, he concluded. CGI’s financial year 1991-92 saw its revenues grow 13.6% (of which only 2% was internal) to the equivalent of $367m, but net profit dropped 13.4% to $26.4m. In specific geographic areas, however, CGI’s activity has improved. Its US business was profitable in fiscal 1991-92, where it lost money the previous year, said Bernard Chapot, vice president-director general, and its revenues this fiscal year should top $40m, from approximately $39.5m last year. For the moment, the US is not one of the worrisome elements in the group’s activity. On the contrary, it is one of the better performing ones, he said. Chapot added that the company is seeing a recovery in its US Pacbase sales since Computerworld printed a test result that rated Pacbase the number one software engineering system in overall functionality and user friendliness. Chapot also singled out CGI’s UK group for praise as a well managed group with positive, stable results. The UK group’s profit is largely due to the Popins masnufacturing requirements planning software, which is well situated in the market, he said. A section of the company’s annual report discussing future prospectives indicates that facilities management at CGI has traditionally been more an auxilliary activity than a driving one. Furthermore, it says, new interest in the market brings us to re-evaluate our position and to determine whether to increase activity via acquisition or joint venture. Mallet said the high cost of entry into the market was precisely why CGI would undertake it through one of those two means because we don’t believe that we can do it all ourselves.
