You just never know where the mortgage market breakdown will hit next.
The latest victim is middleware expert TIBCO Software (NASDAQ:TIBX), which reported a thin quarter Thursday night. The tepid revenue growth and appalling margins were at least partly a result of that financial services meltdown.
Will the housing slowdown trip up every middleware company, from BEA Systems (NASDAQ:BEAS) and Progress Software (NASDAQ:PRGS) to Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) and SAP AG (NYSE:SAP)? I don't think so. TIBCO is in a unique position, and I mean that in a bad way.
You see, TIBCO draws a lot of its revenues from financial companies like Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER) and ABN AMRO. Also, the top 10 customers account for nearly a quarter of all sales.
That very large sector exposure is a result of TIBCO's corporate history. The very company name stems from a software package called The Information Bus, which was a back-end trading-room information management system that Reuters (NASDAQ:RTRSY) acquired and then spun off into TIBCO some 10 years ago.
So when the financial sector stumbles and gets nervous about major capital investments, that software purchase may have to wait until next quarter. Or next year. And that is what's happening right now.
Now, there's a bit more to TIBCO than just financial services, so all is not lost. The company also has a strong balance sheet, which will pull it through this rough patch to the light at the end of the tunnel. When the real estate market turns back up -- a vision that Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke seems hell-bent on realizing -- then TIBCO should turn up, too.
And after a few quarters of slow hiring in the sales and marketing department, management now says that it's ready to pick up some fresh blood and push into new markets with a revitalized sales force. That means we might not even have to wait for a financial-sector rebound.
Hold on tight. There's turbulence ahead.
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