News briefs April 12, 2013

Howard Solomon

12 years ago

BlackBerry vigourously disputes returns report
BlackBerry says it will demand an investigation by two regulators into what it says is a “false and misleading report” from a U.S. investment firm that its new Z10 handsets are being returned by customers in unusually high numbers.

“Sales of the BlackBerry(R) Z10 are meeting expectations and the data we have collected from our retail and carrier partners demonstrates that customers are satisfied with their devices,” BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement. “Return rate statistics show that we are at or below our forecasts and right in line with the industry. To suggest otherwise is either a gross misreading of the data or a willful manipulation. Such a conclusion is absolutely without basis and BlackBerry will not leave it unchallenged.”

It said the investment firm Detwiler Fenton refused to make its report to investors or its methodology to BlackBerry.

BlackBerry said it will ask the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission to investment.

Sandvine reports good Q1
A Canadian maker of network policy control solutions for carriers has reported record first quarter revenue.

Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine Inc. said Thursday it pulled in $25 million (all figures U.S.) in the first three months of the year and a profit of $1.7 million.

“Success in securing large expansion orders from major existing customers and improved results from the EMEA(Europe and Middle East) sales region were key business drivers in the first quarter,” said CEO Dave Caputo in a statement. “Both of these factors will remain important to continued success through the remainder of 2013.”

Sandvine makes the PTS 22000 and 24000 policy traffic switches, which run its traffic management, network security, usage management and network analysis software.

The results are an improvement from a year ago, when National Bank Financial was reporting that Q1 2012 revenue of $20 million and a $6.1 million loss “disappoints again.”

This year NBF noted that the $25 million in revenue beat its prediction that Sandvine would hit $23.8 million.

This last quarter’s results were helped by a $6.5 million follow-on order from an Asian communications provider. Thirty-nine per cent of Sandvine’s Q1 revenue came from Asian buyers, 32 per cent from EMEA and 23 per cent from North American carriers.

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2012 profitable for Route 1

Route 1 Inc., a Toronto-based maker of security and identity-management solutions, said it chalked up $2.277 million in revenue in the last quarter of 2012. For the full calendar year it had $9.1 million, up from $5.5 million from the previous year.

Those results were helped by an arbitration award of about $3.7 million. Without the award the company would have had revenue last year of $5.6 million.

Profit for 2012 was $2.2 million compared to a loss of $1.9 million in 2011.

Route 1’s main products are MobiNet, a cloud-based identity management platform, the MobiLink Secure Gateway for enterprise data centres; MobiLink, a device-based authentication and access software; and MobiLink a remote access technology using either a USB key or an ID card reader.

Earlier this month the company said it has been granted a Canadian patent for its MobiNet system. Also this month it released MobiKey for iPad

Pervasive Software now part of Actian

Actian Corp. has completed its deal to buy Pervasive Software Inc., which makes the Pervasive Data Integrator for data and application integration and data migration.

The deal enables Actian, which makes the Ingres relational and Vectorwise analytics databases, to merge the Pervasive product line into its own, including Data Integrator, for managing large volumes of data from disparate applications; PSQL, a high performance database; and Business Xchange, a cloud-based platform for businesses to exchange electronic invoices.

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