Software AG, the sleeping giant of the German IT industry, is finally getting itself in shape for an expected IPO on the Frankfurt stock exchange at the end of this year or early in 1999. The company has an abysmal financial record and there can be few software companies of its size whose revenues last year were lower than those recorded in 1993. Although the Darmstadt-based company went badly astray in 1995/96 when it plunged into the red, the last two years have seen the company slowly turning round. A major restructuring operation in the first half, pruned costs and enabled the company to boast that revenue per employee increased 31.5% over the previous year. The sale of a majority stake in its US subsidiary have cut sales but brought a royalty stream which has improved margins. The company has high hopes of EntireX, the extension of its middleware family to include the Distributed Component Object Model which links Windows servers and clients with Unix and mainframe environments. The company forecasts significant growth this year – which makes a change from the experience of the previous five.
