Now that Micro Focus Plc has its shares quoted in American Depositary Receipt form on Nasdaq, it feels constrained to say something every quarter in addition to making its customary financial reports every six months. Chief executive Paul O’Grady and the management team were anyway giving a presentation to analysts yesterday on progress in restructuring Micro Focus – and those keen enough can find it on the Web at https://www.mfltd.co.uk/Results/Q3/q395.htm. The company made a ú300,000 loss on the third quarter, unchanged from a year ago, excluding any net software capitalisation in either period. Costs in the quarter, also excluding the net effect of capitalised software, were down 8% compared with the same period last year and down 14% from the peak level of costs in the quarter immediately prior to the restructuring. At the end of the quarter there were 713 employees, down from 760 at the end of the third quarter last year and a peak of 792 at the end of the first quarter this year. Turnover stumbled and was down 9.2% at ú17.7m. Revenues from direct sales accounted for a whopping 91% of the total, which means that few people are bundling Cobol with their machines these days, and few are buying it from hardware vendors – but OEM revenues from sales to computer manufacturers did account for the remaining 9%. Cash balances were at least healthy – $56.1m at the end of the third quarter, and yes, Micro Focus lapses into dollars here – and cash outflows of $5.5m in the quarter included one-off payments of $2.5m in connection with the new development centre in Newbury.Micro Focus is pulling all the stops out on its line for micros running 32-bit operating systems.
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