Symantec Corp on Monday reported fourth-quarter numbers that bested Wall Street estimates by a healthy margin. The company reported net income for the quarter up 4% at $8.3m on revenue that increased 12% to $129.7m. Earnings per share were flat at $0.15. Excluding a one-time charge of $10m in connection with the sale of its networking business to Hewlett-Packard Co (CI No 3,014), Symantec’s net income rose 67% to $0.30 per share, when the First Call consensus was only $0.25. During the quarter, Symantec introduced several new products, including fax software WinFax 8.0 and Norton Utilities for Windows NT 4.0. The company was also busy in other areas, announcing an alliance with Informix Corp to integrate Symantec’s Visual Cafe Pro for Windows 95/NT and Macintosh with Informix’ Universal Server and Data Director. (CI No3,139) and a deal with Sun Microsystems Corp to license Symantec’s Just-In-Time Java Compiler. For the year Symantec reported net income of $26m, or $0.46 per share, on revenue up 6% at $472.2m, compared to a loss of $39.8m in 1996.
