JD Edwards & Co, the Denver, Colorado-based enterprise resource planning applications vendor, confounded analysts’ break-even expectations to report a slim $3.8m profit, equivalent to 3 cents a share, for its fourth quarter. The results, reversing a loss of 7 cents a share for the preceding three-month period to July 31, were driven by 35% quarter-on-quarter growth in software license fee revenue, officials said.
JD Edwards, alongside other vendors, is having to come to terms with newly-straitened circumstances in the ERP market with sales crimped by slowing orders as organizations forsake new installations to focus on the millennium date change bug. In the corresponding period last year it earned $37.7m or 34 cents a share. Nonetheless the company said it had regained profitability ahead of Wall Street expectations on improved sales of e-commerce applications. Revenue stood at $257.6m for the quarter, compared to $307.1m in the year-ago. á
