The turbulent nature of the new democracies of Eastern Europe has left Austrian services company, S&T System Integration & Technology Distribution AG facing an unexpected loss last year. While preliminary figures show that revenues are likely to show an 8.4% rise to the equivalent of $31.6m, the Vienna-based outfit expects to show a loss of $780,000 down from a profits of $4.1m in 1977. S&T, which floated on the Easdaq exchange in 1998, is a leading systems integrator in Eastern Europe with operations in Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, the Ukraine and Yugoslavia. It suffered due to a fall-off in revenues in the final quarter. This was largely because in Slovakia, S&TÆs main market, there was a change of government with the result that no new projects were awarded in the last three months and management at S&TÆs target customers changed. S&T started in 1993 as a distributor for Hewlett Packard in Slovakia but now it has a wide range of alliances and specializes in computer networks for large enterprises. Though S&T believes the economic climate in its markets will not significantly improve in the first half of this year, directors believe that there are ‘positive signs’ that the project business will recover. In the meantime S&T is looking to expand its activities in new and existing markets by local acquiring services companies and systems integrators.
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