New Products Gave Sanchez a 4Q Lift

Sanchez Computer Associates Inc. got a pick-me-up at the end of 2000 from new product offerings for Web banking.

The Malvern, Pa., company posted fourth-quarter net earnings of $733,000, or 3 cents per share, beating Wall Street analysts’ average estimates by 8 cents. For the year, it had a net loss of 24 cents a share.

Sanchez chief executive officer Frank Sanchez credited the fourth-quarter gain to two products unveiled in the period and licensing fees from its core banking products.

Now that it has added the front-end product Profile/ WebConsumer and a middleware banking product called cProfile/Xpress, the company offers “technology across the board,” its CEO said in an interview last week.

The middleware lets banks add features to their legacy systems without making pricey investments in back-office equipment, which Mr. Sanchez said favors his company during a softening of the economy.

Matthew Fassnacht, a senior equity research analyst at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., said cProfile/Xpress “makes the back-end systems behave more like one.” The software, which was brought to market in November, “goes a long way in solving challenges related to adding front-end channels like the Internet and integrating all these back-end systems,” he said.

Mr. Fassnacht acknowledged that the economy is working against banks that want to upgrade their technology, but said Sanchez is “well positioned because of the superior technology of its banking products.”

Sanchez’s earnings report, released Thursday, said its 2000 revenues rose 21%, to $68.4 million. “Our objective is to grow company revenues 40% to 50% this year, which puts us in reach of $100 million in revenue for 2001,” Mr. Sanchez told American Banker.

Its E-Profile core system for Internet banks also stands to benefit from new entrants into banking such as brokerages and insurance companies. E-Profile’s early customers included Internet-only banks X.com, which shut down in early December after 11 months in business, and Bank One Corp.’s WingspanBank.com, which was stand-alone but has been folded into Bank One.

But Sanchez is also building Web banking platforms for traditional powerhouses in financial services, among them American Express Co., Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., and General Motors Acceptance Corp.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER