The abrupt departure of InteliData Technologies Corp.'s chief financial officer has renewed speculation about its future.
InteliData, which is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings May 5, announced Tuesday that John R. Polchin had resigned.
Alfred S. Dominick Jr., its chairman and chief executive, said he would take the additional title of acting chief financial officer, but he said in an interview that it may leave the CFO job unfilled. "I'm not sure we need to replace John."
InteliData will rely on its controller, Dieu Hua, to handle the corporate finances. Unlike Mr. Polchin, Mr. Hua is a certified public accountant, Mr. Dominick said.
Mr. Dominick said that Mr. Polchin left "for personal reasons," but he would not elaborate. "John is a very competent individual, and he did a great job for us as CFO," Mr. Dominick said.
Mr. Polchin, who joined InteliData as the CFO in April 2002, did not return calls seeking comment.
Sales of the Reston, Va., company's electronic bill payment and presentment software and services fell last year, and it has lowered its revenue and earnings projections twice since August. Six months ago participants in a quarterly conference call asked openly whether it should seek an acquirer. (Mr. Dominick's response was that no deals were in the works, but executives would consider an offer.)
Analysts said InteliData has struggled, but they knew of no specific issue that would prompt Mr. Polchin's resignation.
"It's not a good sign that he resigned before their filing" of quarterly results, said Aaron McPherson, a research manager at Financial Insights Inc., a Framingham, Mass., unit of the Boston technology publisher International Data Group Inc. However, he also said InteliData's difficulties seem to have been operational rather than financial.
For instance, its two largest outsourcing clients - BNP Paribas' First Hawaiian Bank and Bank of the West - started using in-house software that deprived InteliData of recurring revenue from outsourcing. Two other major customers - Associated Banc-Corp of Green Bay, Wis., the largest remaining outsourcing client, and Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc. of San Antonio - are scheduled to make similar switches this year.
Such conversions are part of InteliData's business model, as it offers both outsourced and licensed-software options, Mr. McPherson said. "It wouldn't be an issue if they were adding new [outsourcing] clients, but they're not adding new clients."
Beth Robertson, a senior analyst at TowerGroup, a Needham, Mass., research unit of MasterCard International, said, "They've had some bad luck."
For instance, InteliData provided some key technologies for Spectrum EBP LLC, a bank-backed venture for routing billing and payment data over the Internet. It languished as an independent company and was sold in August 2002 to Metavante Corp., the technology subsidiary of the Milwaukee banking company Marshall & Ilsley Corp., but "it is still not being utilized to its full potential," Ms. Robertson said.
InteliData also had a marketing agreement with the Little Rock core processing software maker Alltel Information Services Inc., but Fidelity National Financial Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., bought Alltel a year ago, and InteliData has landed no sales from that agreement, according to its latest annual report.
Ms. Robertson said it has some valuable software assets, including a bill payment warehouse and a least-cost-routing system for electronic payments, but the question is whether it can turn itself around. "They're definitely struggling."
