Unix on Intel specialist Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) Inc has reported fourth quarter and full year results for its fiscal 1997 showing the impact of finally paying off the costs associated with purchasing Unix and UnixWare from Novell Inc at the end of 1995. This now means SCO has lost money for each of the last three years. For the fourth quarter SCO’s revenue fell from $55.2m to $51.8m, with net profit of $4.5m, up from $4.1m in the same period last year. The final quarter’s profitability reflects the benefit of the company’s restructuring program, which has involved a slimming in staffing numbers, closing of offices, and a write-off of acquired technologies; SCO claims the effect has been a reduction of some $6m in operating expenses compared to the same time a year ago. For the year, nonetheless, SCO saw overall sales slipping 6.8% from 1996’s $207.9m to $193.7m, with last year’s net loss of $22.4m being reduced to $15.2m, though excluding the tax impact of nonrecurring charges the Santa Cruz- er would have been able to report losses of only $6.8m. For the year as a whole SCO had to take a hit of $8.4m for restructuring, with nonrecurring charges as a whole amounting to $35.3m. This includes the $23.4m reduction in channel inventory and corresponding revenue in the third quarter of this year, which now looks to be the three months SCO really cleaned house financially. President and CEO Alok Mohan characterized the results as indicating that many of the goals of the ongoing restructuring have been achieved. The company’s imminent launch of the next generation of the UnixWare product and its Tarantella application broker next month (CI No 3,232) were also flagged as fruits of two years worth of R&D. SCO enters its fiscal 1998 with approximately $52m in the bank and in investments, and no long term debt.
