Waterloo Tech Digest - July 13, 2009
Compiled and written by
Gary Will
gary@garywill.com
In this issue:
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
AERO CORPORATE BENEFITS - Your Employee Benefits Solutions Provider
Located in Waterloo, we've served the KW technology community for over 20 years, providing employee benefits solutions to companies large and small. Our mission is simple. Help our clients succeed by doing what we do best: -- Design and monitor programs that attract & retain the most qualified employees -- Contain costs of employee benefits, retirement plans, and HR support -- Provide employee-level support & advice to help you manage risk & compliance. Please contact Herb Goedecke at 519.489.2376 x11 or herbg@aero-corp.com for details.
RISK FREE LEAD GENERATION
From sales opportunity development to increasing attendance for events, Virtual Causeway accelerates your sales process! With a focus on selling and marketing complex services and technology, we guarantee a consistent and reliable flow of quality leads - assuring that your pipeline is constantly full. Contact us today to learn how we can help connect you with your next customer. Call 519-886-1600 ext. 405 or email marketing@v-causeway.com for details.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE HEARD - and we want to listen.
Hagon Design is #1 at creating marketing communications that get heard. Our technology industry experience includes everything from start-ups to global brands. Let¹s get together for a coffee and chat. You tell us where you want to go, we listen, and we¹ll help pave the way to successful marketing. Give creative director, Ben Hagon a call at 519.500.7985 or email ben@hagondesign.com
GO BEYOND STAFFING
For over 30 years, Procom has been matching people with companies, for jobs that are a perfect fit - contract, full-time, or part-time. We partner with large and small companies across North America, including some of the world's best-known enterprises, to provide a range of services, training tools, and the ideal candidates to help them flourish. We've been named one of Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies and go beyond staffing to look strategically at the processes and people that will truly help a company succeed. Phone: 519.885.4331.
BERESKIN & PARR LLP - INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW
Bereskin & Parr is a leading Canadian intellectual property law firm on your doorstep. Our Waterloo region office brings a wealth of experience to serve the growing high technology and manufacturing communities in Canada's Technology Triangle and surrounding areas. Bereskin & Parr's practice encompasses all areas of intellectual property from patents to trade marks and related litigation. Please contact Tim Sinnott (tsinnott@bereskinparr.com) or Jason Hynes (jhynes@bereskinparr.com), at (519) 783-3210 for more information.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[1]---------------------------------------------------------------
EA comes to town; no announcement of J2Play acquisition
June 10, 2009
California-based game developer and publisher Electronic Arts (EA) has disclosed that it now has an office in the Waterloo area, although it has not yet publicly confirmed that it has acquired Kitchener's J2Play. Stories of the J2Play deal began circulating through the area just over a month ago.
EA was founded in 1982 and is listed on Nasdaq with a market value of US$6.8 billion. It reported sales of US$4.2 billion in the year ended March 31. Over the years, it has made acquisitions in Burnaby (1991) and Vancouver (2002), and opened a Montreal office five years ago.
J2Play spun out of J2X Technologies in 2006 under founder Rob Balahura. A year ago, it received $250,000 from Facebook's fbFund. It had previously received funding from Toronto's Extreme Venture Partners.
Although the Waterloo area is known for software development, its record with games has so far been less than impressive. The most significant game developed in Waterloo was Unreal, over a decade ago. It was a blockbuster hit, but the company that created it -- Digital Extremes, led by UW grad James Schmalz -- found it didn't get much value from its just-off-UW-campus address (in what is now a RIM building, of course). Within about a year of Unreal's launch, the company chose to leave town and move down the 401 to London, where it remains to this day. Before Unreal, and while still in Waterloo, Schmalz created Extreme Pinball, which was distributed by EA.
[2]---------------------------------------------------------------
Com Dev creates exactEarth
June 10, 2009
Com Dev has created a new subsidiary, called exactEarth Ltd. It will be built around the space-based automatic identification system (AIS) technology that Com Dev has been developing for the last five years. Com Dev publicly unveiled the technology about two years ago.
The launch of exactEarth was announced at the Nor Shipping Conference in Oslo. The new company will be launching three AIS microsatellites, which are now under construction. Applications include search and rescue, environmental monitoring, vessel traffic management and maritime security.
exactEarth is based in Cambridge and is led by president Peter Mabson, who has been with Com Dev in various roles since 1981. The company will be moving into a 30,000 square-foot building that Com Dev recently agreed to purchase. The building will also be home to Com Dev's mission development group.
[3]---------------------------------------------------------------
Com Dev raises growth targets after another strong quarter
June 11, 2009
Another good quarter for Com Dev, which reported earnings of $4.9 million on sales of $64.1 million in the period ended April 30 (Q2 09). Sales were up 13% from the previous quarter and 18% from a year ago.
With sales over the first half of the fiscal year now up 22% from last year, Com Dev has raised its annual revenue forecast to at least 15% growth, up from the 10% it had stated up to now.
It booked $50 million in new business in the quarter and it ended Q2 with an order backlog of $173 million, down from $189 million at the end of Q1.
Gross R&D expenses were up 44% from Q1 to $5.5 million, or 9% of revenue.
Operations generated $7.2 million in cash and the company raised $21.6 million through a share offering. It ended Q2 with $31.9 million in cash, up $22.7 million from the end of Q1.
[4]---------------------------------------------------------------
Sandvine reports disappointing quarter
July 9, 2009
Comcast was back to being Sandvine's top customer in the quarter ended May 31 (Q2 09), although it was more by default as no other company provided the $2 million in revenue that Comcast accounted for in the period. That worked out to be 13% of Sandvine's total sales of $15.2 million -- down 18% from a good Q1 and up 37% from a weak period last year. Net loss in Q2 was $5.7 million, compared to $5.0 million in the previous quarter. The company described the results as "disappointing."
Sandvine won nine new customers in the quarter, with eight coming through resellers and one through a distribution partnership with Nokia Siemens Network. Of the nine new customers, six were mobile data operators and eight were from outside North America. Four customers -- including Comcast and the reseller who had been Sandvine's top customer in Q1 -- accounted for 47% of all sales.
R&D spending was slightly down from the previous quarter, but was still $6.9 million, or 45% of revenue. Operations consumed $1.5 million in cash and Sandvine ended the quarter with $90.0 million in cash, down $2.6 million from the start of the quarter.
[5]---------------------------------------------------------------
RIM set to pass 30 million BlackBerry users this quarter
June 18, 2009
A rarity for RIM -- I can't think when it last would have happened -- as the company reported a slight sequential decline in sales in the quarter ended May 30 (Q1 10). Revenue of US$3.42 billion fell 1% below that of the previous quarter (which had included the busy Christmas buying season). Sales were still up 53% from a year ago, and RIM's gross profit was up 8% from the previous quarter, thanks to stronger margins.
RIM's Q1 sales in the past two years had gone up 19% and 16% sequentially, but BlackBerry sales in this year's holiday buying period were particularly strong. Revenue fell within the company's forecast of US$3.3-3.5 billion. Net income for the quarter was US$643.0 million, up from US$518.3 million in Q4 and above the company's forecast.
There were 3.8 million new BlackBerry subscribers in Q1, just slightly down from 3.9 million in Q1. RIM will cross the 30 million subscriber mark in the current quarter.
RIM ended the quarter with US$2.4 billion in cash, up US$180.4 million from the end of Q4. Operations generated US$614.6 million in cash in the period.
RIM is forecasting sales of US$3.45-3.70 billion in Q2, with earnings of about US$575 million. It expects to add another 3.8-4.1 million BlackBerry subscribers in the quarter.
[6]---------------------------------------------------------------
STOCK REPORT: Com Dev shares fall despite good quarter
June 2009
When you see that a company 1) has released quarterly results in the month and 2) is at the bottom of the stock market performers for that month, the two are usually related. Not this time, though. Com Dev stock showed the biggest decline in the month -- down 19% -- but the drop wasn't triggered by the quarterly results (which were good) or of the new subsidiary.
The drop was partly caused by a one-day jump in the stock's closing price on the last day of trading in May. And then the stock did lose value later in the month, but that happened days after the company had made its major announcements. I don't know what caused the drop, but it was the second-worst month for Com Dev shares in the last year.
For the month of June:
TurboSonic [OTCBB: TSTA] +22%
Dalsa [TSX: DSA] +11%
Open Text [TSX: OTC] +10%
Descartes [TSX: DSG] +3%
--S&P TSX COMPOSITE INDEX +0%
===============================
ATS [TSX: ATA] -1%
--S&P TSX VENTURE INDEX -3%
RIM [TSX: RIM] -4%
MKS [TSX: MKX] -6%
Arise [TSX: APV] -10%
Biorem [TSXV: BRM] -13%
RDM [TSX: RC] -14%
Sandvine [TSX: SVC] -18%
Com Dev [TSX: CDV] -19%
Over the first eight days of trading in July, the stocks with double-digit percentage changes are Sandvine (-22%), Arise (-14%), and Biorem (-12%).
Companies with core operations outside the area:
Blue Coat [Nasdaq: BCSI] +17%
Acorn Energy [Nasdaq: ACFN] +10%
NCR [NYSE: NCR] +10%
Oracle [Nasdaq: ORCL] +9%
McAfee [NYSE: MFE] +8%
Ansys [Nasdaq: ANSS] +4%
Google [Nasdaq: GOOG] +1%
ON Semiconductor [Nasdaq: ONNN] +1%
===================================
Sybase [NYSE: SY] -4%
Agfa-Gevaert [Brussels: AGFA] -6%
We've reached the half-way point of 2009, and here's how the shares of local companies have fared so far this year:
TurboSonic [OTCBB: TSTA] +182%
RIM [TSX: RIM] +67%
Sandvine [TSX: SVC] +64%
MKS [TSX: MKX] +44%
--S&P TSX VENTURE INDEX +37%
Descartes [TSX: DSG] +25%
RDM [TSX: RC] +15%
--S&P TSX COMPOSITE INDEX +15%
Open Text [TSX: OTC] +15%
===============================
Dalsa [TSX: DSA] -9%
Com Dev [TSX: CDV] -9%
ATS [TSX: ATA] -13%
Biorem [TSXV: BRM] -24%
Arise [TSX: APV] -28%
Market capitalization at June 30
in millions, using outstanding shares
(Year-to-date change in parentheses):
1. RIM ----- $46,910 (+$18,893)
2. Open Text ----- 2,236 (+318)
3. ATS ----- 381 (-5)
4. Descartes ----- 236 (+47)
5. Com Dev ----- 218 (+3)
6. Sandvine ----- 180 (+70)
7. Dalsa ----- 115 (-14)
8. MKS ----- 79 (+23)
9. Arise ----- 48 (-19)
10. TurboSonic ----- 22 (+14)
11. RDM ----- 20 (+2)
12. Biorem ----- 4 (-1)
Descartes jumped ahead of Com Dev in June, while TurboSonic edged in front of RDM.
[7]---------------------------------------------------------------
Miscellaneous Tidbits
Gary Will
gary@garywill.com
In this issue:
- EA comes to town; no announcement of J2Play acquisition
- Com Dev creates exactEarth
- Com Dev raises growth targets after another strong quarter
- Sandvine reports disappointing quarter
- RIM set to pass 30 million BlackBerry users this quarter
- STOCK REPORT: Com Dev shares fall despite good quarter
- Miscellaneous tidbits from Dalsa, Atria, Netsweeper, Navtech, PostRank, Arise, Maplesoft, TurboSonic, Biorem, Logisense
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
AERO CORPORATE BENEFITS - Your Employee Benefits Solutions Provider
Located in Waterloo, we've served the KW technology community for over 20 years, providing employee benefits solutions to companies large and small. Our mission is simple. Help our clients succeed by doing what we do best: -- Design and monitor programs that attract & retain the most qualified employees -- Contain costs of employee benefits, retirement plans, and HR support -- Provide employee-level support & advice to help you manage risk & compliance. Please contact Herb Goedecke at 519.489.2376 x11 or herbg@aero-corp.com for details.
RISK FREE LEAD GENERATION
From sales opportunity development to increasing attendance for events, Virtual Causeway accelerates your sales process! With a focus on selling and marketing complex services and technology, we guarantee a consistent and reliable flow of quality leads - assuring that your pipeline is constantly full. Contact us today to learn how we can help connect you with your next customer. Call 519-886-1600 ext. 405 or email marketing@v-causeway.com for details.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE HEARD - and we want to listen.
Hagon Design is #1 at creating marketing communications that get heard. Our technology industry experience includes everything from start-ups to global brands. Let¹s get together for a coffee and chat. You tell us where you want to go, we listen, and we¹ll help pave the way to successful marketing. Give creative director, Ben Hagon a call at 519.500.7985 or email ben@hagondesign.com
GO BEYOND STAFFING
For over 30 years, Procom has been matching people with companies, for jobs that are a perfect fit - contract, full-time, or part-time. We partner with large and small companies across North America, including some of the world's best-known enterprises, to provide a range of services, training tools, and the ideal candidates to help them flourish. We've been named one of Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies and go beyond staffing to look strategically at the processes and people that will truly help a company succeed. Phone: 519.885.4331.
BERESKIN & PARR LLP - INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW
Bereskin & Parr is a leading Canadian intellectual property law firm on your doorstep. Our Waterloo region office brings a wealth of experience to serve the growing high technology and manufacturing communities in Canada's Technology Triangle and surrounding areas. Bereskin & Parr's practice encompasses all areas of intellectual property from patents to trade marks and related litigation. Please contact Tim Sinnott (tsinnott@bereskinparr.com) or Jason Hynes (jhynes@bereskinparr.com), at (519) 783-3210 for more information.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[1]---------------------------------------------------------------
EA comes to town; no announcement of J2Play acquisition
June 10, 2009
California-based game developer and publisher Electronic Arts (EA) has disclosed that it now has an office in the Waterloo area, although it has not yet publicly confirmed that it has acquired Kitchener's J2Play. Stories of the J2Play deal began circulating through the area just over a month ago.
EA was founded in 1982 and is listed on Nasdaq with a market value of US$6.8 billion. It reported sales of US$4.2 billion in the year ended March 31. Over the years, it has made acquisitions in Burnaby (1991) and Vancouver (2002), and opened a Montreal office five years ago.
J2Play spun out of J2X Technologies in 2006 under founder Rob Balahura. A year ago, it received $250,000 from Facebook's fbFund. It had previously received funding from Toronto's Extreme Venture Partners.
Although the Waterloo area is known for software development, its record with games has so far been less than impressive. The most significant game developed in Waterloo was Unreal, over a decade ago. It was a blockbuster hit, but the company that created it -- Digital Extremes, led by UW grad James Schmalz -- found it didn't get much value from its just-off-UW-campus address (in what is now a RIM building, of course). Within about a year of Unreal's launch, the company chose to leave town and move down the 401 to London, where it remains to this day. Before Unreal, and while still in Waterloo, Schmalz created Extreme Pinball, which was distributed by EA.
[2]---------------------------------------------------------------
Com Dev creates exactEarth
June 10, 2009
Com Dev has created a new subsidiary, called exactEarth Ltd. It will be built around the space-based automatic identification system (AIS) technology that Com Dev has been developing for the last five years. Com Dev publicly unveiled the technology about two years ago.
The launch of exactEarth was announced at the Nor Shipping Conference in Oslo. The new company will be launching three AIS microsatellites, which are now under construction. Applications include search and rescue, environmental monitoring, vessel traffic management and maritime security.
exactEarth is based in Cambridge and is led by president Peter Mabson, who has been with Com Dev in various roles since 1981. The company will be moving into a 30,000 square-foot building that Com Dev recently agreed to purchase. The building will also be home to Com Dev's mission development group.
[3]---------------------------------------------------------------
Com Dev raises growth targets after another strong quarter
June 11, 2009
Another good quarter for Com Dev, which reported earnings of $4.9 million on sales of $64.1 million in the period ended April 30 (Q2 09). Sales were up 13% from the previous quarter and 18% from a year ago.
With sales over the first half of the fiscal year now up 22% from last year, Com Dev has raised its annual revenue forecast to at least 15% growth, up from the 10% it had stated up to now.
It booked $50 million in new business in the quarter and it ended Q2 with an order backlog of $173 million, down from $189 million at the end of Q1.
Gross R&D expenses were up 44% from Q1 to $5.5 million, or 9% of revenue.
Operations generated $7.2 million in cash and the company raised $21.6 million through a share offering. It ended Q2 with $31.9 million in cash, up $22.7 million from the end of Q1.
[4]---------------------------------------------------------------
Sandvine reports disappointing quarter
July 9, 2009
Comcast was back to being Sandvine's top customer in the quarter ended May 31 (Q2 09), although it was more by default as no other company provided the $2 million in revenue that Comcast accounted for in the period. That worked out to be 13% of Sandvine's total sales of $15.2 million -- down 18% from a good Q1 and up 37% from a weak period last year. Net loss in Q2 was $5.7 million, compared to $5.0 million in the previous quarter. The company described the results as "disappointing."
Sandvine won nine new customers in the quarter, with eight coming through resellers and one through a distribution partnership with Nokia Siemens Network. Of the nine new customers, six were mobile data operators and eight were from outside North America. Four customers -- including Comcast and the reseller who had been Sandvine's top customer in Q1 -- accounted for 47% of all sales.
R&D spending was slightly down from the previous quarter, but was still $6.9 million, or 45% of revenue. Operations consumed $1.5 million in cash and Sandvine ended the quarter with $90.0 million in cash, down $2.6 million from the start of the quarter.
[5]---------------------------------------------------------------
RIM set to pass 30 million BlackBerry users this quarter
June 18, 2009
A rarity for RIM -- I can't think when it last would have happened -- as the company reported a slight sequential decline in sales in the quarter ended May 30 (Q1 10). Revenue of US$3.42 billion fell 1% below that of the previous quarter (which had included the busy Christmas buying season). Sales were still up 53% from a year ago, and RIM's gross profit was up 8% from the previous quarter, thanks to stronger margins.
RIM's Q1 sales in the past two years had gone up 19% and 16% sequentially, but BlackBerry sales in this year's holiday buying period were particularly strong. Revenue fell within the company's forecast of US$3.3-3.5 billion. Net income for the quarter was US$643.0 million, up from US$518.3 million in Q4 and above the company's forecast.
There were 3.8 million new BlackBerry subscribers in Q1, just slightly down from 3.9 million in Q1. RIM will cross the 30 million subscriber mark in the current quarter.
RIM ended the quarter with US$2.4 billion in cash, up US$180.4 million from the end of Q4. Operations generated US$614.6 million in cash in the period.
RIM is forecasting sales of US$3.45-3.70 billion in Q2, with earnings of about US$575 million. It expects to add another 3.8-4.1 million BlackBerry subscribers in the quarter.
[6]---------------------------------------------------------------
STOCK REPORT: Com Dev shares fall despite good quarter
June 2009
When you see that a company 1) has released quarterly results in the month and 2) is at the bottom of the stock market performers for that month, the two are usually related. Not this time, though. Com Dev stock showed the biggest decline in the month -- down 19% -- but the drop wasn't triggered by the quarterly results (which were good) or of the new subsidiary.
The drop was partly caused by a one-day jump in the stock's closing price on the last day of trading in May. And then the stock did lose value later in the month, but that happened days after the company had made its major announcements. I don't know what caused the drop, but it was the second-worst month for Com Dev shares in the last year.
For the month of June:
TurboSonic [OTCBB: TSTA] +22%
Dalsa [TSX: DSA] +11%
Open Text [TSX: OTC] +10%
Descartes [TSX: DSG] +3%
--S&P TSX COMPOSITE INDEX +0%
===============================
ATS [TSX: ATA] -1%
--S&P TSX VENTURE INDEX -3%
RIM [TSX: RIM] -4%
MKS [TSX: MKX] -6%
Arise [TSX: APV] -10%
Biorem [TSXV: BRM] -13%
RDM [TSX: RC] -14%
Sandvine [TSX: SVC] -18%
Com Dev [TSX: CDV] -19%
Over the first eight days of trading in July, the stocks with double-digit percentage changes are Sandvine (-22%), Arise (-14%), and Biorem (-12%).
Companies with core operations outside the area:
Blue Coat [Nasdaq: BCSI] +17%
Acorn Energy [Nasdaq: ACFN] +10%
NCR [NYSE: NCR] +10%
Oracle [Nasdaq: ORCL] +9%
McAfee [NYSE: MFE] +8%
Ansys [Nasdaq: ANSS] +4%
Google [Nasdaq: GOOG] +1%
ON Semiconductor [Nasdaq: ONNN] +1%
===================================
Sybase [NYSE: SY] -4%
Agfa-Gevaert [Brussels: AGFA] -6%
We've reached the half-way point of 2009, and here's how the shares of local companies have fared so far this year:
TurboSonic [OTCBB: TSTA] +182%
RIM [TSX: RIM] +67%
Sandvine [TSX: SVC] +64%
MKS [TSX: MKX] +44%
--S&P TSX VENTURE INDEX +37%
Descartes [TSX: DSG] +25%
RDM [TSX: RC] +15%
--S&P TSX COMPOSITE INDEX +15%
Open Text [TSX: OTC] +15%
===============================
Dalsa [TSX: DSA] -9%
Com Dev [TSX: CDV] -9%
ATS [TSX: ATA] -13%
Biorem [TSXV: BRM] -24%
Arise [TSX: APV] -28%
Market capitalization at June 30
in millions, using outstanding shares
(Year-to-date change in parentheses):
1. RIM ----- $46,910 (+$18,893)
2. Open Text ----- 2,236 (+318)
3. ATS ----- 381 (-5)
4. Descartes ----- 236 (+47)
5. Com Dev ----- 218 (+3)
6. Sandvine ----- 180 (+70)
7. Dalsa ----- 115 (-14)
8. MKS ----- 79 (+23)
9. Arise ----- 48 (-19)
10. TurboSonic ----- 22 (+14)
11. RDM ----- 20 (+2)
12. Biorem ----- 4 (-1)
Descartes jumped ahead of Com Dev in June, while TurboSonic edged in front of RDM.
[7]---------------------------------------------------------------
Miscellaneous Tidbits
- Dalsa founder, chairman, and CTO Savvas Chamberlain was one of 59 appointees to the Order of Canada announced on Canada Day. Chamberlain was made a Member of the Order of Canada in recognition of "his contributions to Canada's reputation as a global leader in high-performance imaging and semiconductors."
- Steve McCartney has left Atria Networks, where he had been president and CEO for six years, going back to the days when it was FibreTech Telecommunications and was owned by the hydro companies in Waterloo Region. (McCartney's predecessor at FibreTech, Bill Crosbie, briefly served as acting CEO of Amtrak last fall.)
- Andrew Graydon is the new COO of Guelph's Netsweeper. He was previously CTO of Mississauga's BorderWare and before that was a VP at Toronto-based Wysdom.
- UW grad Mike Neudoerffer has been promoted to COO of Navtech. He had been CTO for the last two years and joined the company as software development VP in 2006. It has also hired Lee Granger as product marketing VP. She was most recently a travel business consultant and previously spent 12 years with the American Automobile Association (AAA). The company -- which uses Toronto in the dateline of its news releases -- announced deals with three companies in Africa and the Middle East.
- AideRSS/PostRank has partnered with Colorado-based Gnip and will provide the company with real-time and archived RSS content and metrics.
- Arise got a three month extension on a €7.0 million ($11.4 million) line of credit that it uses at its German manufacturing plant.
- Maplesoft, along with Toyota, are the industry sponsors of a new research chair at UW. The NSERC-Toyota-Maplesoft Industrial Research Chair in Mathematics-Based Modeling and Design has been granted to Prof. John McPhee, who had been executive director of WatCAR (Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research) at UW.
- Maplesoft was also the recipient of the 2009 Omond Solandt Award from the Canadian Operational Research Society, recognizing the company's contributions to operational research in Canada.
- Also from Maplesoft: the company reported that it has sold nearly 500 licenses of its MapleSim modeling and simulation software since the product was released in December.
- TurboSonic received a $4 million order to design and install a catalytic gas treatment system at a plant in North Carolina.
- Biorem announced that it has received two industrial air pollution treatment contracts in China worth $800,000 -- one from a repeat customer in Shanghai.
- LogiSense's EngageIP billing and CRM software is being used by Omaha-based wireless broadband company KeyOn Communications.
posted by Gary Will at 12:58 AM
Comments (View)
