Borland Q4 profit slides

CALIFORNIA: Borland Software Corp. has said that its quarterly profits fell by half, hit by sour investments and a restructuring charge, but revenues grew 14 percent on strong demand for its software tools.

But the company said its first quarter earnings would fall short of analysts current estimates. It cited higher than expected costs from the acquisitions of two software companies during the quarter for the shortfall.

Borland’s net income in the fourth quarter was $3.1 million, or 4 cents a share, compared with $6.2 million, or 8 cents, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue grew to $67.1 million from $59 million.

Borland competes with Rational Software Corp., which in December agreed to be acquired by International Business Machines Corp. for $2.1 billion.

Like Rational, Borland offers so-called "modeling" tools that let software developers collaborate on their software programs before they actually build them. Rational was Microsoft Corp's biggest partner in that segment, selling its Rational Rose modeling tool alongside Microsoft's own Visual Studio programming tools.

Borland Chief Executive Dale Fuller has said that with Rational now being acquired by IBM, it leaves the door open for Borland to step in and potentially become Microsoft's new supplier. Roughly half of Borland's revenues come from Microsoft-related products and half from Java.

© Reuters