DataMirror Reports Gains in the Second Quarter

Published: August 28, 2006

by Dan Burger

A decent second quarter of revenue growth has lifted DataMirror to a halfway mark in its fiscal calendar that still shows it running behind its 2006 numbers, but optimism runs high in the camp of this data integration and high availability clustering software company.

DataMirror's revenue for Q2 fiscal 2007 increased 5.9 percent, reaching $11 million. However, net income dropped from $1.3 million to $1.1 million during the same time line. Cash flow from operations for Q2 left DataMirror in the red $700,000, which is an improvement over the $1.4 million hole it was in one year ago. Cash, cash equivalents, and short-term and long-term investments stood at $17.3 million at the end of the quarter. Total costs, including costs of revenue, were $9.6 million for Q2, up 9.1 percent from a year earlier.

Revenue for the first six months of fiscal 2007 at DataMirror was $21.3 million, a slight decrease of 1.6 percent for the same period in fiscal 2006. Year-to-date net income was $1.8 million, compared to $2.4 million at the same point last year. Cash flow from operations for the first six months of fiscal 2007 shows $400,000 of red ink compared to $2.9 million of black for the same period in fiscal 2006.

"DataMirror returned to profitable year-over-year growth this quarter," said Nigel Stokes, DataMirror's chief executive officer. Stokes enthusiastically claims that continued investments in the business will support accelerated growth in the second half of the year. "Pipelines for the third quarter and the balance of fiscal 2007 are at record levels," he said. "Growth for the remainder of the year is expected to reach double digits and, combined with the effects of the recently completed share repurchase, should result in record levels of profitability for the year."

During the company's second quarter it announced several technological and business moves. For instance:

• The release of iCluster 4.0, which included performance, monitoring, and usability enhancements that the company claims will add system scalability, reliability, and integrity of System i high-availability environments while reducing total cost of ownership.
• Enhancements to the latest version of the company's mainframe solution, Transformation Server for z/OS (v5.1.7), including a new single-scrape feature, enhanced auto-restart capabilities, and improved throughput and scalability to meet the requirements of large-scale implementations typically found in mainframe environments. Transformation Server accounts for the bulk of the company's license revenue.
• The completion of a issuer bid was the company's most notable business move. This resulted in the repurchase of 2 million common shares at a price of $11 per share, which represented approximately 24 percent of the outstanding common shares of the company prior to the bid. DataMirror also added new alliances, including support for Business Objects' Enterprise Information Management business intelligence strategy.