Daisy Systems Corp, now of Boulder, Colorado has clearly not recovered from the acquisition of computer-aided design software company Cadnetix Corp for $200m. The enlarged company has reported a second quarter loss of nearly $22m (including a $9m restructuring charge) on turnover that plummeted 30% to $33m. And according to Electronic News worse is to come: the company is unable to pay the interest on the $33m which is outstanding on its bridge loan from Heller Financial Inc; it owes bondholders $118m on convertible debentures; and it is being sued by two Santa Clara County developers for moving out of its leased sites in Mountain View, California without paying an alleged $1.5m in rent for February, March and April – the developers say they will continue charging Daisy $500,000 per month in rent until the matter is settled. Daisy is being advised by Regent Pacific Management Corp, the firm it hired last year to help turn it back into a profitable company. The going is slow but Daisy is adamant that it won’t sell off any software lines. Instead it is focussing its research and development effort on products for computer-aided design, engineering and manufacture. The first burst of confidence from the company came with the launch of Viking 1 which is a suite of software in this strategic market area that runs on Sun-4 workstations and which Daisy claims is six months in advance of anything from its rival Mentor Graphics Corp. This product range reveals that all the Daisy and Cadnetix tools have been integrated into one software environment. Viking 1 works with third-party tools and uses the Unix operating system and the C++ programing language. It is shipping now. Meanwhile the company is desperately hoping that its debt can be renegotiated by Regent.
