BEA Meets Earnings Expectations

BEA, based here, also reported that President and CEO Alfred Chuang is taking on the role of chairman, succeeding Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer Bill Coleman, also BEA's former CEO. Coleman will remain a BEA board member, Chuang said in a teleconference.

BEA reported pro forma earnings of 6 cents per share for the quarter, meeting First Call analyst consensus estimates.

BEA revenue for the second quarter was $225.9 million, down 16 percent from $267.7 million for the same quarter last year. License fees comprised about $125 million, or 55 percent of revenue, while services made up $102 million, or 45 percent of revenue, for the quarter, the company reported.

Chuang stressed the importance of having an independent Java platform on which solution providers can build enterprise applications.

Taking shots at competitors IBM and Sun Microsystems, Chuang said BEA WebLogic is the only "nonproprietary solution not tied to services or hardware" in the industry.

Chuang also told analysts to stay tuned for news surrounding BEA's integration strategy, particularly in the area of providing adapters from middleware to software applications. He said BEA would make a significant announcement in the integration space during the third quarter.

Tod Nielsen, BEA's chief marketing officer, outlined a slew of WebLogic customer wins over the quarter. Nielsen said BEA faced IBM 220 times in competitive situations over the second quarter and won the business 210 times. "Ninety-five percent of the time we faced them, we won," Nielsen said.