Integration software vendor SeeBeyond posted a slight profit in the fourth quarter, beating Wall Street estimates and its own revised expectations by a penny per share.
Still, the Monrovia, Calif.-based vendor posted a loss for the year.
SeeBeyond earned $759,000 for the quarter ended Dec. 31 on sales of $40.8 million, beating the high end of the company's original guidance of $34 million for the quarter. Consensus estimates from Thomson/First Call predicted the company would break even for the quarter.
SeeBeyond executives Jan. 8 said they expected the company to break even for the quarter, but raised revenue estimates to about $40 million.
Revenue was up 21 percent sequentially from $32.4 million last quarter, and up slightly year over year from $40.5 million in the year-ago quarter. License revenue was $20.4 million for the quarter, up 82 percent sequentially from $11.2 million in the third quarter, said James Demetriades, SeeBeyond's CEO and founder.
For the year ended Dec. 31, SeeBeyond reported a loss of $20.6 million, or 25 cents per share, compared with a loss of $16.2 million, or 20 cents per share, in 2002. Sales for the year were $137.8 million, a 23 percent drop from sales of $150.8 million in 2002.
Buoyed by his company's stronger than expected fourth quarter despite an overall loss for the year, Demetriades was bullish on the company's outlook for 2004, saying he has "never been so excited" about SeeBeyond's potential for revenue.
Demetriades also pointed to a strong initial reception for SeeBeyond's Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) 5.0 software suite, a new product that shipped in the fourth quarter, as a reason for his optimism. Aimed at large enterprises building composite applications, ICAN takes a modern, service-oriented architecture (SOA) twist to application integration. The suite comprises 10 modules that, for example, model business processes, execute them, transform data between application formats, orchestrate processes and monitor their interactions.
Offering guidance for the year ahead, SeeBeyond CFO Barry Plaga said the company would continue to remain cautious about its financial expectations. SeeBeyond expects to post a loss in the range of of 3 cents to 1 cent per share for the current quarter, on sales ranging from $36 million to $38 million, he said. However, Plaga said the company expects to either break even or return to profitability in the second quarter.
