Expanding on the company’s profit warning (CI No 2,826) Symantec Corp chief executive Gordon Eubanks says the company’s quarterly results will be terrible in part because of weak sales of its utilities for Microsoft Corp’s Windows95 operating system. Overall, Windows95 is doing well, he told Reuters, but he said that with most copies of the new operating system going out preinstalled on new computers, customers have been delaying purchase of any add-on utilities. I think other companies have been in a similar situation, he said. He said sales in the quarter were also hurt by the government shutdown and by the company’s failure to bring its European distributors up to usual inventory levels at the end of the quarter. We’re not trying to hide anything, he said. We had a terrible quarter. We screwed up. Nevertheless, I think our mission of being a leader in utilities and communications on the desktop is a good mission for the company, he concluded. I think over the next year we will get a good return on them.
