Although the figures look deceptively dour, it has been a constructive first half for JBA Holdings Plc, the Birmingham, UK-based ERP enterprise resource planning software house and IBM Corp AS/400 reseller. The company has reported net losses for the six months to June 30 of 884,000 pounds down from equivalent losses last time of 1.4m pounds on turnover that rose 33.4% to 88.1m pounds. But the reported figures are still suffering from the firms decision last year to convert to US accounting standards. The resultant timing differences on revenue recognition have taken big chunks out of JBAs earnings as, under the old UK rules, the loss becomes a profit before tax of 2.5m pounds. The pain is all on behalf of JBAs 36% US investor base and the firms long talked about float on the Nasdaq. This is still in the pipeline, but chairman Alan Vickery wants the quarter on quarter figure to settle down substantially before he makes the leap. Revenue from the Americas hit 42.2m pounds this period with Europe a close second at 41m pounds, boosted by the April acquisition of French software house and AS/400 reseller Presys SA. Product licenses and software support for JBAs 35 module ERP package, System 21, are now running at 54% of revenues, and a Windows NT version of System 21 is currently being Beta tested. The company is planning an early 1998 launch for its mixed platform configuration which allows NT Servers to use Unix and AS/400 back ends for high volume batch processing. JBA spent 12.4m pounds in the period on research and development and Vickery sees further consolidation in the ERP market as inevitable as the cost of product support continues to climb.
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