APPLICATIONS
Bull announces its first quarter 2007 revenue
Bull announces that its revenue for the first quarter of 2007 was €247.1 million, a decline of 3.9% compared with revenue of €257.2 million published for the first quarter of 2006. Nevertheless, after adjusting for the Italian operations sold in December 2006, revenue grew by 2.4%.
"Our revenue growth at constant structure in the first quarter of 2007 reflects the success of the operational measures we initiated in the second half of 2006 as the progress in the maintenance domain shows in particular" underlined Didier Lamouche, Chairman and CEO of Bull. "Our teams are determined to pursue the transformation of the Group and to lead Bull on the course of profitable growth."
Order intake increased by 19%
First quarter business activity was vigorous, particularly in the United States, where a $44 million contract was signed with the State of California, in Latin America and in Germany where orders grew by 64% and 35% respectively.
Service and solutions activities progressed by 28.5% for order intake and 17.7% for revenue
Order intake was particularly strong (+28.5%) in the service and solutions activity, confirming the trend seen in previous semesters. The strategy aiming to increase services as a proportion of overall Group revenues continues to be executed: revenue from the service activities progressed by 17.7%, registering the eighth consecutive quarter of growth.
Maintenance activity revenue grew by 3.8%, that of products declined by 7.9%
Maintenance activities showed revenue growth for the first time, confirming the value of the actions initiated in 2006: the new worldwide organization and differentiating offers. Nevertheless, the first quarter of 2006 provides a favorable base for comparison; Bull anticipates that revenue for the full year 2007 will remain slightly below the 2006 level, but that the decline will be improved compared to the -9.6% reduction registered in 2006.
Product revenue declined 7.9% in line with the trend seen during the fourth quarter of 2006. The reversal of this trend over the coming quarters constitutes a key priority for Bull, driven by a renewed offer and the development of integrated solutions.
2007 outlook
The Group confirms the outlook announced in February 2007: the objective for EBIT (see glossary) in 2007 is in the range €20 million to €24 million with the objective for the second semester being higher than the first semester. Key factors contributing to the achievement of this target will be to continue to reduce the rate of decline in the Maintenance business, to improve the margin in Services, and to grow sales in the open servers market.
Highlights of the first quarter 2007
Bull launched its 7i program: seven key initiatives designed to help businesses reap the benefits of an open world. Combining the best in services and technologies, the 7i program aims to help businesses turn their information systems into drivers for creating value in a connected world, by facilitating growth, competitiveness and sovereignty.
In the services arena, Bull - the nation's leading Business Intelligence solution provider in the public sector Health and Human Services space - has won a four-year, $44 million contract to provide the hardware, software, services, and consulting expertise for the State of California. The system will be used to help manage Medi-Cal, the California Medicaid system, the largest state plan in the U.S. in terms of people covered (6.6 million).
Bull consolidated its commitment to Open Source with:
* A partnership with SpikeSource to accelerate adoption of open source applications in the enterprise market.
* Bull also announced NovaForgeTM, a secure, collaborative application development platform. NovaForge is a comprehensive group of innovative services and tools based around Open Source components that are extensively used by Bull's R&D teams.
In the servers arena, Bull has chosen High Performance Computing (HPC) as one of the development priorities. Two major announcements reflect this strategy:
* Bull, the French Atomic Energy Authority (CEA), German national HPC center HLRS, Intel and Quadrics have announced the creation of the TALOS (Technologies for Advanced Large scale Open Supercomputing) alliance, aimed at accelerating the development of high-performance computing solutions in Europe.
The TALOS alliance lines up with current development efforts in Europe aiming to provide the region with top level HPC technologies, particularly against the backdrop of the Seventh Framework Program (FP7) launched by the European Commission in 2007.
* Bull and Miracle Machines have entered into an OEM relationship to jointly address the High-Performance Computing (HPC) market in Singapore.