Like other software stocks, Agile Software
In the fiscal second quarter, revenues nudged up from $31.5 million to $32.5 million. Unfortunately, license revenues increased by only $400,000 to $10.5 million. These revenues are critical for a software company since they lead to ongoing maintenance and service fees. Agile posted a net loss in the second quarter of $0.03 per share, which was an improvement from last year's net loss of $0.07 per share. However, the net loss might be higher in the current third quarter because of Agile's ongoing investigation of its stock option practices. The investigation has not been cheap; the legal costs were about $1.5 million in the second quarter.
Agile focuses on the development of so-called product lifecycle management (PLM) software. The company's offerings help customers with the design, planning, development, selling, and servicing of their products. Benefits include lower costs, higher product quality, and faster time-to-market. Agile has more than 11,000 customers, including Dell
Compared to other enterprise software companies, Agile has a fairly low valuation. Factoring in its liquid assets (which amount to about $174 million), the enterprise value (EV) is about $186 million -- which means the company is selling at 1.4 times its EV, compared to a more typical ratio of 2 times EV.
There is now some pressure on management to perform better. In September, the shareholder activist fund Shamrock announced that it owns a 5% stake in Agile. For Agile shareholders, the good news is that Shamrock looks for deep value plays, and it's not afraid to push companies to focus on their stock price.
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Fool contributor Tom Taulli does not own shares of companies mentioned in this article. He is currently ranked 288 out of 14555in CAPS.
