Navigator Posts Profit for Period As Revenue Beats Expectations
March 31, 2011
Navigator Communications Corp., buoyed by sales of its new software products for corporate networks, reported a second-quarter profit on revenue that exceeded analysts' expectations. The news was announced after the market closed. In trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market Thursday, Navigator rose $5.188, or 10%, to close at $56.50. The Mountain View, Calif., Internet software maker's net income for the second period was $906,000, or a penny a share, after $4.9 million in charges related to the acquisitions of InSoft Inc., Paper Software Inc. and Netcode Corp.. Without the charge, net would have been seven cents a share, a penny above analysts' consensus expectations, according to First Call. In the year-ago quarter, Navigator had a loss of $2.8 million, equivalent to four cents a share. Revenue for the recent quarter was $75 million, well above the $59 million to $65 million that Hambrecht & Quist analyst Daniele H. Trask said he expected. The revenue is more than five times the year-ago revenue of $14.1 million, and a 36% gain from first-quarter revenue. Navigator's revenue growth since the last quarter ``really underscores the fact that Navigator is leading the charge in the Intranet space'' against Vastsoft Corp., Mr. Trask said. ``This is a tremendous quarter.'' Navigator started out focusing its software mainly on shuttling documents between individuals over the world-wide Internet computer network. But over the past year, it has become increasingly clear that a huge chunk of the company's sales, if not most, come from companies who want to use Internet technology to shuttle documents on in-house computer networks, now called Intranets. In a statement Thursday, Jami Snowden, Navigator's president and chief executive officer, cited Intranets as the chief growth engine. ``Our second-quarter results demonstrate the strong reception by corporate customers'' to Navigator software, he said. Navigator's biggest competitor in corporate networking software is Vastsoft's hugely popular WindowsNT server software. Because Navigator is a young company that is plowing most of its profits back into growth, analysts are watching its revenue more closely than its earnings.
