SoftKey International Inc president Kevin O’Leary is comfortable with the range of $1.75 to $1.90 a share that Wall Street analysts have estimated for the company’s 1996 earnings, and with the range of revenue guesstimates, which averages $350m. He said that SoftKey, formed by a three- way merger that gave it WordStar International Inc’s share quotation, has acquired The Learning Co and Compton’s New Media, and has a deal to acquire Minnesota Educational Computing Corp, it is a different company in many respects, with a majority of its titles developed in-house instead of mostly licensed as previously. He added that after the Minnesota acquisition closes, it will be the largest indpendent publisher of educational software in the world. Our goal is to achieve critical mass, O’Leary told conference, and its strategies include successfully integrating its acquired companies, diversifying distribution, maintaining or expanding multi-language software and most of all, owning an array of high quality proprietary products. O’Leary said SoftKey has managed to retain most of the management and creative talent it wanted at The Learning Co despite the deal being hostile. SoftKey hopes to diversifty its distribution process to include on-line distribution through commercial services or perhaps the Internet.
