A breakdown of business done by territory showed European sales up 69% to UKP3.9m, with US sales, recorded in dollars, up 60% to $8.5m. In Japan, however, sales were down 9.5% at the equivalent of $2.1m – not, according to West, a bad result, but a reflection of the extremely good Japanese results which the company recorded last year. In addition, argued West, a good August in Japan, could be taken to indicate that things were on course for an encouraging second half result. In terms of revenue distribution, figures showed the US unchanged at 50%, Japan down to 11% from 20%, and Europe up to 39% from 30%; good OEM results and a 30% expansion of the distributor network for the company’s Cobol/2 Workbench were cited as the major reasons behind the growth. Revenue analysis figures for the six months showed a 45% contribution from the company’s OEM operations, with 44% generated by direct sales; the remaining 11% comes from the company’s 50% owned subsidiary, Softwright Systems Ltd. Figures aside, the company was able to report a number of acheivements from the individual divisions, created after a restructuring exercise last year. The Computer Industry division – the generic term for the company’s OEM business in the US and Japan reported turnover for the period up 13%, agreements, due to materialise during the course of the year, on a wide range of RISC processors including Sun Sparc, Motorola 88000, IBM RT and the MIPS chips, and the launch of a number of 80386 products. Within the Packaged Product division, the company announced a dramatic 94% increase in turnover, the expansion of support services for large corporate customers, and the very important alliance signed with Microsoft Corp (CI No 966), which had already widened its marketplace significantly. For Micro Focus Europe, the company was able to report a 64% increase in turnover, and, in addition to the extension of the distributor network, a move amongst 60% of its OEM customers over to Cobol/2. Future plans include continued growth on the OEM side, the placing, in the light of the sucessful Sage Software deal, of greater emphasis on value-added resellers and independent software vendors, the availability of certain, unspecified, tools from the Packaged Product Line to OEM customers, and expansion of distribution alliances of the Microsoft kind for the core compiler product.
