Technology Stocks Mixed for Week Despite a Rising Overall Market

Shares of publicly held financial technology companies ended the week mixed, despite the fact the equities market overall continued to rise.

Stock prices continued to reach record levels last week, pushed by more statistics that signaled a slowdown in economic growth in the United States, as well as a firmer dollar overseas.

Payment processor National Data Corp. on Thursday announced that earnings for its third fiscal quarter of 1995 grew by 46% over the comparable quarter last year. Revenues for the period increased by 22%, officials said.

Earnings for the third quarter were $3.86 million and $.28 per share, a result taken before the company completed a three-for-two stock split last Monday. Atlanta-based NDC earned $2.64 million and $.20 a share in the third quarter of fiscal 1994.

Revenue increased to $62.2 million compared to $51.0 million in the third quarter last year.

"This is the third consecutive quarter of double digit growth in revenue and reflects continued strengthening of our core business segments - health care and integrated payments systems," said Robert A. Yellowlees, NDC's chairman and chief executive officer. "Health care revenues increased 40% while integrated payment systems was up by 20%."

NDC's common stock closed at $17.50 per share Friday, down 12.5 cents for the week.

Joining a spate of initial public offerings in the financial technology sector over the last six months, Cats Software Inc., a developer of client/server systems for derivatives risk management, successfully floated two million shares of common stock at $12 dollars per share on Tuesday.

Cats joins Affiliated Computer Services Inc. and Transaction Systems Architects Inc., both financial systems that went public recently.

Officials at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Cats the shares were offered through a syndicate headed by Hambrecht & Quist Inc. and Cowen & Co. Proceeds will be used as working capital and general corporate purposes, they added.

Cats Software's common stock closed at $15.75 per share Friday, up $3.25 for the week.

Another bank software firm, Charlotte, N.C.-based Broadway and Seymour Inc. announced Wednesday it is working with hardware maker Sun Microsystems Inc. to provide telephone call center and branch delivery systems for financial institutions.

The companies' new systems would be based on Sun's Solaris line of networked computers and Broadway & Seymour's "object-oriented" application software. Object-oriented technology is a programming approach that simplifies the modification and maintenance of software running on many linked computers.

Broadway & Seymour's stock closed at $18.50 a share Friday, down 50 cents for the week.

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