Commenting on Informix Corp’s first quarter earnings announcement (CI No 3,401), Alan Kerr, vice president of the UK, Middle East and Africa admits the company has a long way to go before the word ‘turnaround’ could be used, but says it has achieved several of the milestones it set out to under the leadership of new chief executive Bob Finoccio. Informix turned in net profits of $7.1m against losses last year of $144m, on revenue up 12% to 167m. Kerr, echoing Finoccio, likes to think of this quarter as the second quarter of the New Informix. The company has, he says, strengthened its balance sheet, trimmed its expenses and sorted out its revenue accounting, for which it has had its knuckles severely rapped in the past (CI No 3,346). It has also hired a load of new staff as per its earlier promises, including a new head of the French operation, a chief information officer for Europe, as well as a new chief financial officer and Finoccio, of course. Kerr himself joined the company shortly before Finoccio, and says he was already beginning to implement the sort of changes Finoccio is doing, in his own territory. He says the company is happy with its decision to focus entirely on databases, and not diversify into applications, consultancy or middleware, like competitors Oracle Corp and Sybase Inc. Kerr knows that two quarters do not constitute a future, but says the way to judge the company’s recovery will be against five milestones it has set itself: growing the top line, in other words increasing revenue long term rather than just making profits in the short term; making a profit for the whole of 1998; maintaining its product leadership, and he refers to new core engine products including Java and add-ons including datawarehousing modules; re-engineering its long term partnerships, which Kerr says the company has successfully done, and building a new channel for Windows NT, which is the one thing he admits it has not done yet. This is the beginning of a long road, Kerr acknowledges. He also admits that Europe’s result were disappointing this quarter. Europe accounted for only 31% of worldwide revenues, which Kerr says should be considerably higher. While the UK showed very strong performance and gained some impressive customer wins, and Southern Europe – Spain, Portugal and Italy – held its own, France and Germany did not do well. Kerr puts this down to management problems rather than market difficulties, and says the new management is now in place, and the company is also looking to recruit an overall manager for Europe. Kerr believes people still want to buy Informix in a big way, especially for very high end, mission critical bespoke systems, where Informix makes its highest margins.
