Shares of System Software Associates Inc, Chicago fell sharply on Friday, a day after the company warned it expects a substantial loss for the third quarter, falling $3.4375 to $8.875. The company is suffering from the migration pains of moving all its AS/400 software over to Unix, and the move is turning out to be tougher than it expected. It warns that sales for the fiscal third quarter to July 31, will be less than $90m, compared with $105m in the same period of 1995. It says sales were hurt by delays created when prospective clients wanted to evaluate more fully its new BPCS Client/Server version 6.0. Chief executive officer Roger Covery also said the firm had very weak sales in Europe and Asia, but business was strong in the US and Latin America. While these third quarter results are disappointing to us, we will not be changing our strategy or cutting back on our business, Covey said. During the quarter, we won substantial new business head-to-head against our principle competitors at key major accounts. It says it has shipped BPCS Client/Server version 6.0 to more than 160 clients, 50% of them Unix users.
