Irish-American middleware vendor Iona Technologies Plc warned Thursday that its first-quarter results will come in below expectations. The Dublin-headquartered company is projecting revenue between $20.8m and $21.5m, an improvement over year-ago sales of $17.6m but not enough to show a profit on the bottom line. Iona reckons that it will report something between a loss of $0.03 per share and break-even, down from net income of $0.10 per share last year. Those numbers look even worse when one considers that analysts surveyed by First Call were expecting profits of $0.18 for the quarter.
Iona says its problems came when a number of orders that were expected to close during the quarter didn’t, due to what it is calling internal challenges associated with our implementation of an enterprise sales model. Also, the quarter will see increased expenses stemming from aggressive hiring in the areas of sales and product development as well as expanded marketing activities under a new corporate branding initiative. Iona says, however, that it believes the investments are in line with market demand and should bring about a healthy return down the line. The company will announce actual results for the quarter on April 14.
