This Business-Software Sleeper Delivers

By Anders Bylund | More Articles
December 23, 2009 | Comments (2)

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Last week, I told you that TIBCO Software (Nasdaq: TIBX ) would impress with its fourth-quarter report. Today, the pudding has been served -- and it's full of proof.

TIBCO delivered record sales of $196 million and grew non-GAAP earnings from $0.21 per share to $0.23 per share after taking out $0.02 per share of one-time tax credits from last year's figure.

TIBCO's cash flow is positive, the debt load is much smaller than the cash account, and CEO Vivek Ranadive expects to keep 15% to 20% earnings growth going in 2010. That's a conservative estimate, mind you -- TIBCO based that number on the idea that the economy and IT markets will not rebound significantly over the next year. If that happens, consider it a bonus on top of what TIBCO will deliver in a tortoise-slow recovery.

It looks like TIBCO is still fighting the good fight against larger competitors like IBM (NYSE: IBM ) , SAP (NYSE: SAP ) , and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL ) without missing a beat. The real-time nature of TIBCO's business intelligence software seems to fit the zeitgeist nowadays, when pundits wax poetic over Google (Nasdaq: GOOG ) doing Twitter searches and TIBCO customer NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX ) brags about microsecond trade execution.

That's why I believe that TIBCO will keep stealing contracts from under IBM's and Oracle's noses, until they develop their own real-time data exchange formats or simply throw up their hands and buy TIBCO wholesale.

The stock is up 8% today and not far from one-year and four-year highs. And I think we've only just seen the start of TIBCO's climb to the skies, as the company and its business data products are finally hitting the mainstream.

What do you think, dear Fool? Discuss TIBCO's future in the comments below.

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Fool contributor Anders Bylund owns shares in Google, but he holds no other position in any of the companies discussed here. Google and NYSE Euronext are Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommendations. The Fool owns shares of Oracle. Try any of our Foolish newsletters today, free for 30 days. You can check out Anders' holdings and a concise bio if you like, and The Motley Fool is investors writing for investors.

Read/Post Comments (2) | Recommend This Article (7)

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Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

Report this Comment On December 28, 2009, at 12:07 PM, mabehr wrote:

Who says that NYX is using TIBCO for its microsecond executions? NYX may be a TIBCO customer and NYX may have microsecond executions (actually, the linked article just says that their network round trips are >50us), but are you aware of public information saying *how* NYX is using TIBX? As far as I am aware, they could be being used in HR at least as much as they could be part od the core execution functionality. TIBCO has a lot of products, not necessarily related to stock execution, and NYX is a big company. (I'm sure you'll also recall that NYX recently bought Wombat, which has a reseller relationship with TIBCO messaging competitor 29West, as well as offering its own fabric.)
Report this Comment On January 06, 2010, at 4:17 PM, Fool wrote:

The suggestion that using real-time decision making software in HR, in contrast for microsecond trading executions is utterly ridiculous. As far as you are aware, the world is probably flat.

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