That isn’t going to do anything to mollify the Feds or competitors: Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates said the Microsoft Network will deliver full Internet access 120 days earlier than it had planned.
IBM Corp’s analysts meeting had just got under way when we closed, and chief financial officer Jerome York was telling analysts that foreign exchange gains boosted second quarter earnings by about $0.36 a share but that foreign exchange effects were not expected to help earnings as much this second half; York also said that despite recent press reports, IBM’s backlog of orders for mainframe remains strong.
Gartner Group Inc, Stamford, Connecticut has bought a 19.9% stake in Pathfinder Research, a privately-held semiconductor research, consulting and analysis firm founded in 1992: Gartner expects to introduce a semiconductor-based continuous service in October 1995 in co-operation with Pathfinder.
The dismal performance of IBM Corp’s disk drive business and the Ramac arrays seems to have cost Ed Zschau his job: he is leaving the company and will be replaced by James Vanderslice, currently head of the Pennant printing business; Zschau, a former congressman for the Silicon Valley area, joined IBM two years ago to turn around the disk drive unit; he says he will now devote more time to education, public policy, entrepreneurial endeavours and emerging industries; analysts say that the IBM disk business is still barely profitable.
Commenting on second quarter figures (page seven), Sprint Corp says intense competition slowed its growth in long distance revenue and volume of use in the second quarter, putting it further from its target of exceeding the industry’s growth rate: We are not satisfied with the rate of minute and revenue growth, which has slowed since the third quarter of 1994, said Gary Forsee, president and chief operating officer of the long distance division; long distance revenues rose 4.5% on a year ago to $1,770m; minutes of use rose 5.7% on 1994.
Cypress Semiconductor Corp is participating fully in the semiconductor boom (figures, page seven) and says orders grew to a record $200m in the second quarter, up 88% from the second quarter of 1994; backlog for the quarter reached $258.2m, 154% higher than a year ago and 50% up on the first quarter this year.
Texas Instruments Inc’s record second quarter profit of $2.88 a share, up from $1.93 a year earlier (figures, page seven), exceeded analysts’ mean estimate of $2.50: driven by record revenues and operating profits in its main semiconductor business, the company said net profit jumped to $278m from $184 and sales jumped 29%; Texas said the growth of the worldwide semiconductor market continues to exceed expectations; its backlog filled orders at June 30 was $4,600m, up $761 million from the June 30 1994 figure, and most of this was down to soaring demand for chips – semiconductor orders reached record levels in every major region, with strength across all product lines, with more than half the growth from the first quarter being in application-specific and mixed signal devices; bad news is that defence revenues were flat.
People that bought Tadpole Technology Plc shares in the flotation and have clung on through thick and thin can heave a small sigh of relief because they are back up above the issue price and rose 14 pence to 81 pence in heavy volume of over 1m shares yesterday on speculation that the company is about to launch the world’s fastest laptop computer, dealers noted; the Cambridge company still has to stage that extraordinary meeting of shareholders because its net assets have fallen below 50% of paid-up share capital.
Conner Peripherals Inc says it expects the shortage of components in the disk drive industry to continue for the foreseeable future as desktop and commercial computers demand more storage space: he said the company is ramping up manufacturing capacity to meet demand but parts a vailability and other issues will affect the current quarter; second quarter fi
gures in page 7.
IBM Credit Corp saw second quarter net profit down 4% to $63.9m; capital equipment financing for end users in the second quarter was up 86% to $1,100m from the year-ago quarter, and capital financing for distribution channels was up 50%; for the first half, profits were down by 3% at $121.9m; end user finance rose 87%, distributor, 43%.
Cheyenne Software Inc has established a technology and marketing partnership with Computer Associates International Inc to integrate Cheyenne’s storage management software with CA-Unicenter software.
Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc is a pretty good name, no? Snappy, a little quirky, full of character, gives the Cambridge company an instant personality, with the twist that no-one is ever quite sure whether Mr Beranek’s name should be pronounced Berrerneck or Berannick – so now, some dreary button-down balance sheet watcher who is presumably deeply ashamed of the company’s founders, wants to change it to the hopelessly dreary, tedious and anonymous BBN Inc: don’t do it!
Commenting on its figures (page seven) Eastman Kodak Co says while overall performance at the company had been good in the second quarter, some cost items remained at unacceptable levels; improvements in gross profit margin and the fall in research and development costs as a percentage of sales contributed to Kodak’s improved net margins.
A former marketing representative for IBM Corp has been awarded $65,000 by a state-court jury in Santa Monica, California in a sexual harassment case: those with long memories will recall that Veronica Gunther had alleged in her suit brought in 1993 that she was pressured to resume a sexual relationship with a senior Defense Department official in order to secure federal funding for the company; the jury, in a nine-three vote late last week, found that IBM had harassed Ms Gunther and it awarded her damages for emotional distress, but they rejected her claims that her two supervisors had harassed her and cost her wages and benefits.
Time Warner Inc has begun testing high-speed delivery of on-line services to 500 homes, schools, libraries and offices at one of its New York cable systems: it will charge $14.95 a month, for which customers will receive a range of services including local, national and international news, shopping, sports, weather and electronic mail; the $14.95 charge includes rental of a high-speed modem, and for $9.95 more per month, they will receive high speed Internet access.
Comdisco Inc acquired some assets of National Equipment Sales & Leasing Inc on undisclosed terms and formed a new business division, Comdisco Laboratory & Scientific Group, to market asset management, leasing, reconditioned equipment and related services to the pharmaceutical, chemical, research, biotechnology and health-care markets.
Not going to be much room left on the disk after it’s finished, so users will have to make up their minds quickly which one they want to use and delete the other two: IBM Corp plans to pre-install OS/2, Windows 3.1 and Windows95 on both its business and home computers.
Japan’s Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications reiterated its view that affiliates of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp are not subject to the Japan-US telecommunications accord aimed at raising purchases of foreign equipment: Next week’s talks are to discuss purchases by the semi-governmental NTT, the ministry’s deputy minister Yoshio Utsumi said; Purchasing by private companies is outside the remit of those talks, he insisted firmly.
Intuit Inc says the on-line banking ventures it announced with 19 financial institutions last week does not change its forecast of earnings as 10% to 15% of sales as it stated recently, or its forecast of 30% revenue growth: the Intuit Services subsidiary organising the on-line financial services launch will operate at a loss for a few years as it gets the services under way.
Christopher Edgecomb, founder and former executive vice-president of WCT C
ommunications Inc, has filed suit against Frontier Corp, which just acquired WCT, alleging that Frontier has demanded that Edgecomb forego business opportunities without the monetary compensation stated in the acquisition agreement: Our initial review indicates that (the complaint) is completely without merit, and we will contest it vigorously, Frontier declared.
Compaq Computer Corp plans to start offering Windows95 for its machines on the launch date next month, but some customers may not get their software at once and may have to content themselves with a voucher entitling them to delivery later.
