Channel Growth Drives Trend Micro Earnings

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, Trend Micro posted a profit of $38 million, up from $21.2 million a year earlier. Third-quarter 2004 sales rose 36 percent year over year to $143 million, the company reported.

The results reflect continued quarter-over-quarter revenue gains during the past year, according to Trend Micro. "We hesitated using the word 'record,' but clearly this quarter is another record in North America for Trend Micro," Bess said.

Sales of enterprise security products in the third quarter grew 28 percent vs. the year-ago quarter, Trend Micro reported. The fact that enterprise offerings--rather than consumer security products--accounted for more than three-quarters of Trend Micro's revenue in the quarter shows that the vendor's channel program is working and growing, Bess noted.

"This time last year, we had maybe 900 or 1,000 VARs. Today, we have just shy of 3,000 VARs that on a quarterly basis are moving our products," he said. "We expanded our business and product line down to SMBs and midsize enterprises, and they are strongly touched by our reseller channel. So I think we got the [channel] program right."

Trend Micro's focus on network security over client security also helped drive product sales, Bess added. "The market's shift in focus away from the desktop and to the server and the gateway plays to our strength," he said.