Shares in Sybase Inc plummeted $15.375 to thump down at $23.75 yesterday after the Emeryville, California company warned that its earnings for the latest quarter will be well below Wall Street’s expectations: it is forecasting first-quarter profits of 3 cents to 6 cents per share before the $25m in charges associated with the Powersoft Corp acquisition where the Street had been going for 28 cents or so; it sees sales for the quarter of $213m to $216m, below Wall Street’s estimates of $240m; according to Curt Monash, editor of the Monash Software Letter, Sybase has suffered because of performance and compatibility issues in its key database product – There simply is a performance problem on all except smaller computers, he said; There is also a performance problem for key third party applications; Sybase says its goal remains to ship its new System 11 in the third quarter and System 11 should solve the current performance problems.
Apple Computer Inc declined comment on reports that the company will soon announce a major reorganisation that will see the departure of Ian Diery, general manager of the personal computer division: the reports say four existing Apple divisions will be combined into two major ones, Apple Research & Development and Apple Marketing & Solutions; manufacturing will remain a separate unit and the existing sales geographies – Apple USA, Apple Europe and Apple Pacific – will remain as they are, sources said.
Although it took IBM Corp five years longer than anyone expected to get its first mainframe disk arrays out the door, it still had to go out of house for some of the technology, which means that third parties are the subject of speculation now that Ramac has rammed the performance buffers: Fremont, California-based Zitel Corp says that although sales pressures continue, it has no concerns about maintaining the company’s royalty stream based on Ramac sales – while noting that there can be no assurance about the long-term success of any product, the company issued a statement saying that IBM had said it would ship more than 3,500 units of Ramac by the end of last month.
Sony Corp will never make the video compact disk or player to the standard promoted by Toshiba Corp, its new president, Nobuyuki Idei, said: We will certainly not make disks with a laminated construction, Idei told Reuters in an interview.
Siebe Plc is buying again: it has bought US screw and compressor manufacturer LeRoi Inc for ú20.6m and a controlling 60% stake in automotive components group Fabex Inc for ú17.2m; privately-held LeRoi, based in Sidney, Ohio, had net assets of ú14.8m in the year to December 31 and made operating profit of ú2.2m and pre-tax profits of ú1.9m on sales of ú29.4m; Fabex, which supplies tubular parts and fluid assemblies to the automotive industry, had pre-tax profits of ú1.8m sales of ú24.8m in the year to July and net assets of ú15.4m; also also privately-owned, it is based in Novi, Michigan, where it has two factories, plus a distribution centre in Laredo, Texas and two manufacturing plants in Mexico.
Nintendo Co Ltd warns that the yen’s strength and weak overseas markets cut earnings sharply in the year to March 31: it says it expects to report unconsolidated net of $1,120m, down from $1,330m last time and the shares plunged 390 yen to 4,670 in Osaka yesterday; it says it spent most of the year running down inventories overseas.
It appears that although Compaq Computer Corp refers to the processors in its new high-end Presarios as Pentium-class, the first ones shipped will use the Real Thing – Pentiums from Intel Corp, and that ones using the Nexgen Inc Nx586 will follow when Compaq has those available in volume (CI No 2,637).
Telecom Eireann will cut its international call charges on April 26: the move will result in a reduction of up to 20% in the cost of North American calls and the prices of calls to Britain fall by up to 10%.
Chile’s VTR Telecomunicacions SA, in which Southwestern Bell Corp has a 40% stake,
has slashed its workforce to improve efficiency and cut costs: 210 out of 675 were sacked.
Motorola Inc pledged to raise its aggregate investments in China to $1,200m by 2000 from $280m at the end of last year; Motorola (China) Electronics Ltd said the expansion would include a $360m investment in its Tianjin factory, where it makes pagers and cellular telephones, and an advanced semiconductor wafer fabrication facility is also planned; Motorola will raise the domestic content of its components to 50% by 2000 from the current 30%, and raise its workforce to 10,000 in 2000 from 3,300 employed now.
The new Multimedia 6100 home computers from Hewlett-Packard Co’s Home Products Division include a bundle of software from Novell Inc including WordPerfect Works, Clip Art for the Home, Wallobee Jack: The Secret of the Sphinx, Read with Me 1 & 2, Write with Me and Memphis Math: Treasure of the Tombs; the machines also include Quicken SE, Compton’s Interactive Encyclopaedia, Simply House by 4Home Productions Inc, Microsoft Corp’s Home CD Sampler and America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy on-line access software.
Samsung Electronics Co and Nintendo Co Ltd have ended their embarrassing dispute over video game counterfeiting with a settlement in which no money changed hands: Nintendo agreed to drop its lawsuit charging that Samsung was responsible for the counterfeiting of hundreds of thousands of copies of its hit video game Donkey King Country and Samsung dropped its countersuit charging Nintendo with defamation; a joint statement issued by the companies said the counterfeit software was provided to Samsung by third parties and Nintendo applauds Samsung’s stand against piracy and its continuing efforts to protect intellectual property rights, Nintendo of America Inc. Chairman Howard Lincoln declared.
Copenhagen, Denmark-based Olicom A/S has settled a securities class action lawsuit, but as a result, has now taken a $4.2m charge, net of contributions anticipated from the company’s directors and officers’ liability insurance carrier, against fourth quarter 1994 figures; as usual, the company settled the suit rather than endure the cost and diversion of management time and efforts to fighting it.
Whatever Matsushita Electric Industrial Co may do, Sony Corp says it has no intention of selling off its Sony Pictures Entertainment unit.
Alcatel Submarine Networks SA won the $61m order for the fibre optic cable to link France and Portugal.
Unisource NV has set its sights beyond Europe and has teamed up with China Resources, Mobile System International and Telepaging Ltd to create People’s Telephone Ltd consortium to bid for a Hong Kong Personal Communications Net licence.
Cisco Systems Inc has opened an office in Johannesburg, South Africa to serve the emerging market.
Correction: for Plymouth read Paignton in the headline in yesterday’s Northern Telecom Ltd story.
Sounds like bad news for Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG: a Reuters headline reads UK TO CRACK DOWN ON PYRAMID SELLING SCHEMES.
