You may recall a blog I wrote earlier in the week, after we had been accused of misrepresenting Trend Micro’s profits because we highlighted its net income (in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and not the firm’s operating income.
Net income was down 39%, while operating income was only down 4%. We gave both figures in our original news story.
Well I had a chat yesterday with the firm’s affable CFO and COO, Mahendra Negi, who agreed that we were quite right, and that a spokesperson for the firm should not have taken umbrage at our use of net income in the first place. “We read your blog and you are quite right, fair enough,” said Negi. “Our net income was as you showed it and I’m not going to go against that.” …[click continue reading for more on this story]…
On the positive side, while Negi conceded that the firm is seeing the effects of the economic slowdown, he noted that it did grow sales 4% when reporting in its native Yen, or 20% if those figures are converted to US dollars. If you look at the US dollar conversion for all figures, the firm actually saw operating income up 11%, while net income would have been down 29%.
Of course these US dollar figures are non-GAAP too, and as such should be treated as hypothetical, but they do show that operating in Yen didn’t exactly help the firm this quarter.
As for the UK business, Trend Micro does not break out figures for individual countries. Europe grew well though, with sales up 9% in the quarter. That compares to growth of 7% for Japan, and 4% for the US. Asia Pac was down 16%, while Latin America was down 5%.
Negi also gave me a little scoop: Trend Micro will likely launch a UK retail business for consumers and small businesses some time next year – today it sells almost exclusively to larger enterprises in this geography. “We’re picking partners now,” said Negi. “We’ll use a channel model.”
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