Compagnie des Machines Bull SA has regrouped all of its automated banking and electronic payment equipment activities into a new Bull PCC – Points of Client Contact – division, which its director Gerard Compain said could be spun off. It wouldn’t shock me to be spun off into a subsidiary, considering the management philosophy of [Jean-Marie] Descarpentries, who is a champion of decentralisation, Compain said. But for the moment that is not my priority. My priority is to grow our sales. We have proven that we can grow revenues despite difficult times. Bull presented figures showing that its worldwide revenues for automated banking terminals grew 88% by volume and 52% by value, while those for point-of-sale terminals grew 38% by volume and 30% by value. Although Compain would not divulge exact revenues for the division, he gave an approximate total of 10% of Bull’s total revenues in the banking sector. He added that only the automated banking sector was profitable last year. Bull PCC does not include the Bull CP8 SA smart card subsidiary, with which it is working closely on sales, although Compain said he would not say that the two will not be joined in the future. CP8 has always been an independent subsidiary and we first had to do some housekeeping within Bull itself, he said. We’ve been developing a strong synergy with CP8 in the last few months. The new division, which has been in operation for six months, is responsible for selling and servicing banking and retail automated payment systems in 22 countries worldwide. Currently, PCC’s revenues come 25% from France, 30% from the rest of Europe and another 30% from Asia, Compain said. We don’t want to be a service company like Cap Gemini Sogeti or like Sligos because we have the hardware know how, but neither do we want to be a traditional hardware manufacturer. We will rely on industrial partners to manufacture the terminals, Compain declared.
