Veritas trimmed its outlook and now expects to post earnings of $0.17 to $0.19 a share, on revenue of $475m to $485m. Excluding amortization of intangibles and stock-based compensation, the company expects earnings to be $0.18 to $0.20.
Veritas now estimates that license revenue will be in the range of $263m to $273m, and services revenue to come in at about $212m.
This is a significant drop from the $490m to $505m range predicted by Veritas at the end of its first quarter. It is also sharply below what Wall Street had been expecting. According to a Thomson First Call survey, analysts had expected quarterly earnings of $0.24 on revenue of $501m.
Our anticipated results were impacted primarily by weakness in our US enterprise sales, chairman Gary Bloom said. At the end of the June quarter, our anticipated order flow weakened, contributing to lower-than-expected license revenues. Bloom said its services business remained strong, driven by healthy maintenance renewals throughout the quarter.
Veritas is the world’s second-largest maker of data-storage software, and the announcement is something of a setback for the company, after it pleased the markets in June with the news that it had restated its results for 2001 through 2003 in order to fix accounting errors.
The restatement brought Veritas a step closer to ending a US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of its accounting practices. Veritas is expected to release its second-quarter results on July 27.
