Headlines:
Writedowns Hurt Carreker in Fiscal 1Q Nova Names Hypercom Preferred Provider Health-Care Pairing: PayFlex, First Data
Writedowns Hurt Carreker in Fiscal 1Q
Carreker Corp. blamed a net loss for its fiscal first quarter on writedowns but said it expects improvement.
The image and payments vendor said Wednesday that it had a net loss of $34,000, or break-even on a per-share basis, for the three months that ended April 30.
In the quarter that ended Jan. 31 it had net income of $1.5 million, or 6 cents a share. (The Dallas company compares its financial results sequentially, with the preceding quarter, rather than with the year-earlier quarter.)
Carreker's profit in the first quarter of fiscal 2005 was $498,000, or 2 cents a share. In that quarter for its current fiscal year its revenue was $27.2 million, down 10% from the fourth quarter and 4% from a year earlier.
Carreker said that it took writedowns of $1.5 million in each of the last two quarters and that they were related to the intangible assets of acquisitions. It said it also had stock option expenses of $382,000 in its first quarter.
Excluding those items, the company said, its non-GAAP net income for the April quarter was down 37% from the previous quarter, to $1.9 million, or 8 cents a share. It did not provide a reconciliation for year-earlier results.
John D. "Denny" Carreker, the chairman and chief executive, said in the earnings release that "we remain confident about our full-year outlook."
The company said it expects that its second-quarter results will be down year over year but that it will post higher revenue and net income in fiscal 2006 than in fiscal 2005.
Nova Names Hypercom Preferred Provider
Nova Information Systems has selected Hypercom Corp. as its preferred provider of card payment terminals.
The Phoenix terminal company announced the agreement Tuesday. Nova, a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp of Minneapolis, is one of the largest merchant acquirers in North America.
Nova has had several sales initiatives centered around Hypercom products, including a point of sale field upgrade campaign to replace older payment devices with newer equipment compatible with tougher security requirements.
"This agreement expands Hypercom's long-standing relationship with Nova and paves the way for a significant increase in business volume from Nova's large merchant base," said Lisa Shipley, Hypercom's senior vice president for national sales, in a press release.
Health-Care Pairing: PayFlex, First Data
PayFlex Systems USA Inc. of Omaha, an administrator of medical accounts, is using First Data Corp. to process payments for all of its health-care spending accounts at the point of sale.
PayFlex announced Tuesday that it had integrated the payments system from First Data Healthcare Services, a division of the Denver transaction processor.
The PayFlex cards support such features as real-time pharmacy benefit management, co-pay, and over-the-counter qualifying purchases.
