Now that it has left the safe harbor of General Motors Corp, life on the ocean wave is decidedly choppy for Electronic Data Systems Corp, and its chief financial officer, Jody Grant, told the conference that quarterly sales will continue to vacilate from strong to weak, and that the company expects to continue to have some weak quarters – Sales are very lumpy. We cannot predict when we are going to close a deal, he said – We have had weak quarters and we will continue to have weak quarters, because fluctuation is the nature of the business, he said, but the company is implementing a strategy to smooth the lumpiness of its businesses, particularly the margins it achieves from new contracts. It will pursue both high-margin, higher risk business and low-margin, lower risk business with a goal of an overall even margin. The goal is a portfolio profile that produces target operating margins, he said.
