Cognos Inc, the business intelligence software provider from Ottawa, Canada, saw its shares jump by 20% in early trading on Tuesday following an upbeat set of results for the company’s third quarter. Cognos reported net profits of $16m compared with profits before acquisition-related charges of $12.5m last year on revenues up 23% at $76m, prompting an immediate upgrade on the shares to ‘buy’ from ‘market perform’ by BT Alex Brown. The company’s business intelligence tools saw a 32% rise in sales to $59m and Ron Zambonini, chief executive officer of Cognos, said that both license and total revenue growth for the business intelligence products exceeded 30%. However, revenues from Cognos’ application development tools remained flat at $17m for the quarter, although Zambonini said this business was stable. Cognos also announced the $10m acquisition of Relational Matters a provider of datamart technology for datawarehousing (see Top Stories).
