Inprise/Borland Earnings Show Return To Profitability

Despite ominous predictions by analysts, Inprise/Borland's earnings show the company is here to stay,at least for now.

For the second quarter, Inprise, Scotts Valley, Calif., reported a return to profitability, with revenue of $46.7 million, up 16 percent from $40.2 million in the same period last year.

"We continue to make progress achieving our financial objectives, particularly in the operations area," said Fred Ball, Inprise's senior VP and CFO, in a prepared statement.

But Inprise hasn't been without its troubles. Industry pundits have been predicting the company's death by acquisition for some time. In the past year alone, Inprise survived a failed merger attempt with Corel, as well as a management overhaul.

At its developers conference two weeks ago, Inprise attempted to revive itself once more with a renewed focus on the company's cross-platform tool strategy for Web application development.

At the conference, interim president and CEO Dale Fuller announced that Inprise's JBuilder Java tool will support Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS 10. Fuller also outlined a plan to ship new rapid application development (RAD) tools under Project Kylix, which will expand the capabilities of Inprise's Delphi and C++ development tools for Linux.

If earnings are any indication, that plan may be the jump-start Inprise has needed.

Excluding merger costs, Inprise netted an income of $4 million, or 6 cents per share. Though the gain may not indicate that Inprise is a cash cow, it beats the company's income loss of $9.5 million, or 18 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Last week, Fuller said his main objective now is to stabilize Inprise's portfolio business.

Inprise hired Fuller about a year ago to turn the company around. Last week, he said returning the company to profitability is just the first step in the process. Recent Inprise announcements signal "new technology that's going to be rolling out over the next three quarters" to grow the company's revenue stream, he said.

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