Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN) has reported that its second quarter fiscal year 2007 earnings estimates are expected to exceed the company’s business outlook and plans to accelerate the improvement of its operating margin.
“The plan will allow us to continue investing in our growth opportunity, while improving efficiency and accelerating our operating margin improvement,” said Rob Ashe, Cognos president and chief executive officer. “We remain focused on executing on our strategy for market leadership and investment in customer success as we move forward.”
The company’s operating margin improvement plan includes a workforce realignment to enhance organisational agility and remove management layers and continued investment in customer-facing operations, including sales and professional services. The company expects cost savings of approximately US $28 million on an annualised basis and $13 million in the remaining half of fiscal year 2007.
Based on preliminary financial data, the company expects revenue for the second quarter to be around $228 million. License revenue is expected to be in the range of $77 million to $78 million.
“We are very confident in the strength of our market opportunity, our company and our solutions. We had a good quarter, and, while a workforce reduction is difficult, we are determined to drive higher operating margin performance going forward.”
“The Middle East is a key target market for Cognos,” said Graham Walter, vice-president, Cognos UK, Middle East, and South Africa. “We have registered exponential growth in the region and, to support our operations, we are expanding our dedicated local presence in target markets. The value we add to our partners comes from our in-depth technological expertise, and we are now in a position to offer sophisticated and strategic support to all our clients in the region.”
About Cognos:
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization’s ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? – and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.
Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.
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Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
