Headlines:
Bisys Files '05 Report and Restatements NCR Earnings Soar Though Revenue Dips Fundtech to Add Digipass to Its Software Phishing E-Mails Set a Record in March
Bisys Files '05 Report and Restatements
Bisys Group Inc. has begun catching up on its paperwork.
The New York company, which processes mutual fund transactions and sells insurance, said Wednesday that it had finally filed its annual report for its last fiscal year, which ended June 30, and restated its results for the two previous years.
The restatement - which mainly involved accounting for fees received from its mutual funds - cut Bisys' net worth 8.2%, to $751.7 million as of Dec. 31, 2004, the closing date of the last quarter for which it reported earnings.
The decrease was in line with its previous estimate of 8% to 8.5%.
The restatement also cut its fiscal 2003 net income by 21%, to $77.3 million, but increased its fiscal 2004 net income by 10%, to $70.1 million. For the last fiscal year, it reported net income $48.1 million.
Bisys said it expects to file its report "shortly" for the quarter that ended March 31, 2005 - the period its accountants were working on when they found the problems.
It also said it expects to file reports for the first three quarters of this fiscal year by the end of June.
The issues delayed the company's plan to sell its information services unit, which provided outsourced core processing and item processing services to banks. Bisys sold the unit last month to Open Solutions Inc. of Glastonbury, Conn., for $470 million, after two audit-related postponements.
NCR Earnings Soar Though Revenue Dips
Despite a dip in revenue, NCR Corp. said cost-cutting efforts and improved manufacturing processes helped drive up its first-quarter earnings. The Dayton, Ohio, automated teller machine company reported Thursday that its net income climbed 36.7% from the first quarter of last year, to $41 million, as revenue fell 4%, to $1.28 billion.
Revenue at the company's ATM unit fell 5%, to $259 million. NCR said the unit's revenue a year earlier had been particularly strong; early last year many customers were upgrading or replacing their machines to support the Triple DES encryption format and to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
First-quarter revenue fell 7% at NCR's Teradata data warehousing unit, to $326 million, and 2% at its retail store automation unit, to $172 million. NCR lowered its GAAP earnings guidance for the full year to a range of $1.81 to $1.86 a share. In January it had said it expected to earn $1.85 to $1.90.
"Although I'm not pleased with our first-quarter revenue performance, I'm encouraged by our continued operational improvement in the quarter, which enabled NCR to deliver meaningful year-over-year earnings expansion," Bill Nuti, NCR's president and chief executive, said in a press release.
Kartik Mehta, an analyst with First Horizon National Corp.'s FTN Midwest Research Securities Corp., said NCR reported during its earnings call that ATM pricing was "stabilizing."
That was "the same comment Diebold made earlier this week, so I thought that was a positive," Mr. Mehta said.
Fundtech to Add Digipass to Its Software
The Jersey City corporate banking software provider Fundtech Ltd. has agreed to use authentication technology from Vasco Data Security International Inc. of Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.
Fundtech said Thursday that it would integrate Vasco's Digipass one-time password software into its cash management and payment software. The Digipass codes expire quickly, making them useless if stolen.
Also Thursday, Vasco announced that its first-quarter earnings rose 39% from the same quarter last year, to $2 million, and revenue rose 20%, to $13.7 million.
Vasco credited its earnings growth to winning 341 accounts, including 34 with banks.
Phishing E-Mails Set a Record in March
A record number of phishing e-mails were sent last month, according to a monthly report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
The number of unique phishing e-mails documented by the trade group rose 24% from December, to 18,480, and the number of phishing Web sites rose 34%, to 9,666, according to the report, released Wednesday.
However, the number of companies being impersonated fell 42%, to 70, the fewest in a year.
The data used for the monthly reports is provided by MarkMonitor Inc. of San Francisco, Websense Inc. of San Diego, and Panda Software International SL of Bilbao, Spain.
