Netscape Communications Corp’s impressive growth continues apace, but the next few quarter will reveal whether the Mountain View California browser pioneer can survive in the busier market of intranet servers. Last week the company insisted that its focus for 1997 would be on electronic mail and groupware, but there is unlikely to be enough mileage in that to reproduce the kind of figures it produced yesterday a year from now. The market was in no mood however to react favorably to hi-tech stocks yesterday, with DEC shares being downgraded everywhere and Nasdaq suffering its biggest point loss in a month. So having just $0.25 shaved of Netscape’s shares to close at $44.50 was a backhanded compliment in yesterday’s atmosphere. The company turned in third quarter net profits of $7.7m, or $0.09 per share, up from just $175,000 in the same period last year. Third quarter revenues climbed to $100.0m, from $23.3m last time. Netscape crammed a lot into the quarter – this is Internet time after all – with the launch of Netscape AppFoundry set of reusable applications, the Open Network Environment (ONE) platform and the support of more than 50 partners and 21 licensees, the launch of Navigator 3.0, what now turns out to be the last standalone browser the company will have, and finally the setting up of its Navio Communications Corp subsidiary to divvy up Netscape software into components, aimed primarily at the emerging network computer market. Net earnings for the three-quarters were $12.2m, or $0.14 per share, after a $6.1m merger-related charge for the acquisitions of InSoft Inc (CI No 2,844), Paper Software Inc (CI No 2,850) and NetCode Corp (CI No 2,923), against losses last time of $7.1m, as revenues climbed to $231.1m , from $43.8m a year ago.
