SeeBeyond Reports First Profit As Public Company for 4Q 2001

SeeBeyond

SeeBeyond, based here, reported a profitable fourth quarter and growth in revenue for fiscal 2001, with an earnings loss that was 5 cents less than First Call analysts' predictions.

SeeBeyond finished 2001 with pro forma revenue of $187.1 million, a 63 percent growth from last year's revenue of $114.8 million. Revenue for the fourth quarter also was slightly higher than the previous year, $44.1 million compared with $42.7 million in the year-ago quarter, according to the company.

For the year, however, SeeBeyond posted an earnings loss of 7 cents per share, 5 cents less than the 12 cent per share loss First Call analysts predicted. The company also earned a penny more per share for the quarter than First Call estimated--2 cents per share vs. analyst predictions of 1 cent.

In a conference call, SeeBeyond founder, President and CEO Jim Demetriades spent much of his time defending his company's "weak cash position," noting that although SeeBeyond--which has been public for two years--has only $23 million in cash, it is making big customer and partner wins.

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"Our competition has been ... using our cash balance to beat us," said Demetriades. "We lost $5 million to $10 million in business because of our weak cash position."

Despite this, Demetriades said Global 2000 companies such as BMW, Ericsson and Qwest are all using SeeBeyond's technology as their integration standard. He also noted that systems integrators are starting to take the company seriously.

"The systems integrators are a great organization when deciding who the leaders are in the industry," said Demetriades. "Accenture has selected us for internal integration products; EDS has selected us for internal integration products; PWC has selected us for internal integration products. I think we're unique in that way."

Demetriades said that systems integrator partners contributed to 47 percent of SeeBeyond's license revenue for the fourth quarter, and 51 percent of license revenue for 2001. License sales for the quarter were $24.5 million, down from last year's $27.3 million for the same time period, but up from the $21.5 million posted in third-quarter 2001.