MKS Weathers the Economic Storm in Fiscal Q3
March 9, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Application lifecycle management software maker MKS polished off its third quarter of fiscal 2009 on January 31, and the strengthening of the U.S. greenback against the Canadian looney, as well as plain old-fashioned growth, helped the company turn in a pretty good quarter, considering how tough the economy is. MKS, which is a public company whose shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, reported $13.2 million in sales in the quarter (that’s in U.S. dollars using U.S. accountancy rules), up 3.2 percent. The company’s license sales in the quarter dropped by 10.1 percent to $3.7 million, but a 6 percent increase in maintenance fees, to $6.98 million, and a 20.9 percent jump in services revenues, to $2.52 million, more than made up for the declines in software licenses in the quarter. For the company’s ALM tools, of which Integrity is the flagship brand, license fees fell by 12 percent to $2.8 million in the quarter, but ALM services fees rose by 21 percent to $2.5 million and maintenance relating to the ALM products rose by 8 percent to $6.3 million. Overall ALM sales rose by 5 percent to $11.6 million, and ALM products accounted for 87.9 percent of total sales at MKS in fiscal Q3. MKS trimmed its costs and brought $325,000 to the bottom line in fiscal Q3, which is a lot better than the $754,000 loss it had in the year-ago quarter. “We were pleased to report continued growth in revenue and profitability for the current quarter and the first nine months of this fiscal year,” said Philip Deck, chief executive officer at MKS, in a statement accompanying the financial results. “We also enjoyed strong cash generation as we completed our largest seasonal quarter for maintenance renewals and collections.” For the nine months ended in fiscal 2009, MKS has booked $44.8 million in sales, up 12 percent, and has brought $2.3 million to the bottom line, compared to a loss of $877,000 for the first three quarters of fiscal 2008. Perhaps more significant in these times is the fact that MKS is now sitting on $16.3 million in cash and equivalents, up from $10.6 million when the quarter began. Cash is king right now, and credit is queen. If you have both, you have a pretty good chance of riding out this economic storm, provided it doesn’t gale for too long. RELATED STORIES MKS Updates Change Management for i OS, Warns of Big Revenue Jump Q&A with MKS CEO Philip Deck: Automating the Automaters MKS Swings to a Profit on Revenue Growth in Fiscal 2008 Second Quarter MKS Updates ALM Tools for iSeries, Distributed Systems MKS Refreshes Change Management Suite, Adds ‘Dashboard’ View MKS Integrates Workflow Application with WDSc
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