September 2001

Compiled and written by
Gary Will

E-mail:
gary@garywill.com

Issue 55 -- October 1, 2001
In this digest:

1. MKS product manager killed in World Trade Center attack
2. Mitra to be acquired by Belgium's Agfa
3. Freedom Intelligence plans to merge with UK partner
4. Rodin intends to seek protection from creditors
5. ADexact attracts $5.5 million investment

6. STOCK REPORT: Is this the bottom?
7. MKS quarter holds steady
8. Navtech lays off 20% to cut costs
9. Miscellaneous tidbits from Sandvine, iAnywhere, RDM, PrinterOn, Descartes, RIM, EMJ, Com Dev, JPH, Dalsa

MKS product manager killed in World Trade Center attack
September 11, 2001

Peter Goodrich, product manager for MKS' Engineer Integrity and Code Integrity product lines, was one of the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center. He had been flying from Boston to Los Angeles on United Airlines flight 175, the second plane to collide with the towers.

Goodrich, who lived in Boston, joined MKS earlier this year through the company's acquisition of Upspring Software, based near Boston. Since joining MKS, he had made frequent trips to Waterloo and worked closely with the team here.

"He was kind of guy that we want to build this company around -- bright, energetic, enthusiastic, tenacious. We are heartsick across the company at his loss," said Ellyn Winters-Robinson, director of marketing at MKS. A story in the Boston Globe emphasized Goodrich's athletic accomplishments. In the late 1980s, he had been a multi-time NCAA Division III All-American in track & field at Bates College in Maine.

Goodrich was 33 years old and leaves behind his wife, Rachel.

His family has established the Peter Goodrich Memorial Trust -- described as "a fund that will provide a scholarship to a child who has the curiosity for learning which Peter embraced all his life." Donations to the fund can be made by contacting Megan Hall at MKS.

Among companies with development sites in Waterloo, Raytheon and Sybase both lost people in the attacks. Financial Fusion, a Sybase subsidiary, was sponsoring a conference on the 106th floor of the north tower when it was hit. Two Sybase employees were killed, and the losses might even have been higher had the company not moved out of its World Trade Center office a couple months ago.

Sybase employees company-wide are contributing to a fund for the families of the two employees that were lost, and at the end of October the company will match the employees' contributions to that fund, as well as their contributions to the American Red Cross and The New York Stock Exchange Fallen Heroes Fund.

Mitra to be acquired by Belgium's Agfa
September 26, 2001

Belgium-based Agfa-Gevaert has signed a letter of intent to acquire Mitra. The two companies have worked together since Mitra was formed 10 years ago -- Agfa hired Mitra to develop its IMPAX radiology imaging technology and that contract initially represented the bulk of Mitra's revenues. Agfa and Mitra co-founded IMPAX Technology Inc. in 1999.

Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Mitra will be managed as a separate business unit. CEO and co- founder Eric Peterson will likely leave, but the other managers are expected to remain. The company has over 300 employees world-wide, with most of them in Waterloo. Mitra expects to continue working with manufacturers other than Agfa.

"We have spent the last six to nine months contemplating all available options, including private and public financing, and mergers," said Mitra exec VP Yvan Couture. "Our mandate and focus has always been to select the option that would ensure continued presence and operations in Waterloo."

Agfa, which was wholly-owned by Bayer AG of Germany until 1999, had sales of $3.6 billion (all figures converted to Canadian dollars) over the first half of 2001 and net income of $45 million. Working capital at the end of June was $2.6 billion. Technical imaging, which includes healthcare, has been the only one of the company's three core segments to show revenue growth this year, with sales climbing 10% to $1.3 billion.

Since 1999, Agfa has been a public company, listed on the Brussels Exchange (now part of Euronext), as well as the Frankfurt Exchange. Its share price has fallen by about 50% over the last year.

The company just unveiled a restructuring plan that will see it cut 4,000 jobs by the end of next year, but it is expanding its medical imaging operations. Along with the Mitra acquisition, Agfa also just announced that it is taking a minority stake in MediVision Medical Imaging Ltd. of Israel.

Freedom Intelligence plans to merge with UK partner
September 25, 2001

Freedom Intelligence expects to merge with Aruna plc of London, England, with operations continuing under the Aruna name.

Aruna lists Freedom Intelligence founders Gaston Gonnet and Tim Snider as its chief scientist and co-founder and chief technologist, respectively. Freedom Intelligence technology has been incorporated into the Aruna Companion product.

Aruna evolved from Coalescent, which was the largest partner of Freedom Intelligence. The founder of Aruna/Coalescent, Mark McLellan, had been an investor in the Waterloo company.

Based in London and leading the combined company will be Jack Hewitt, former CEO of software developer Versata Inc. of Oakland. The Aruna release mentions that in March 2000 Versata had the 7th- best first day of trading following its IPO in the history of Nasdaq. It doesn't mention that it fell from a high of US$101 on that day to US$0.28 by the time Hewitt left in March of this year.

Aruna's Web site lists Versata as one of the company's resellers.

Aruna also announced in September that UK insurance company Pinnacle Insurance plc has signed "a major contract" for the Aruna Companion software.

Also from Freedom Intelligence: Alastair Rough, who had been sales VP, recently joined Mitra.

Rodin intends to seek protection from creditors
September 7, 2001

What a difference a year has made for Rodin Communications. A year ago, it hired ex-Communitech boss Vince Schiralli to oversee day-to- day operations, was expecting an imminent listing on the TSE, and was forecasting sales of $15 million for this year.

Twelve months later and Schiralli is gone, the TSE listing never came, and the company may end the year not far off the $2.5 million in sales it recorded in each of the last two years. It has now filed a notice of intention to make a proposal to its creditors to restructure its debt and prevent them from forcing it into bankruptcy.

CEO Loreto Saccucci said he was "confident that Rodin will emerge as a much stronger company" from the restructuring.

In July, the North Renfrew Times reported that Rodin had stopped work on the broadband network it had been contracted to build in the Ottawa Valley area. "The company was supposed to sink $23 million into the project ... [but] has apparently run into trouble financing the deal," said the Times. Rodin reported that work on the contract was deferred "until the terms and conditions of the contract could be renegotiated." In August, it sent $1.3 million in equipment that was to be used in Renfrew back to its supplier (Cisco).

Then in September, the Owen Sound Sun Times ran a story about Rodin's work on another broadband network -- in Grey-Bruce -- headlined "Slow death of high speed hopes." One of the local officials who had selected Rodin to build the network characterized his experience with the company as "two years worth of broken promises," although two others quoted in the story described Rodin as "responsive" when problems arose. An Owen Sound councillor later said he was surprised to hear about a history of unfilled promises since nothing negative had ever been mentioned to city council.

The Sun Times reported that Rodin owed money to companies in the Owen Sound area, and quoted one of them saying he doesn't expect he'll ever see the money.

Saccucci told the paper that he had "just recently taken over the reins to run [Rodin] day-to-day."

The company quickly -- maybe too quickly -- issued a response to the Sun Times story saying that "rather than being criticized in the press" it would expect to be praised "for moving decisively to limit the impact of those [telecom industry] problems on its customers, suppliers and other stakeholders."

Rodin said the restructuring was expected to be completed within 30 days, which would be by the end of this week.

Over the first half of 2001, Rodin reported a net loss of $1.8 million on sales of $1.4 million. At June 30, it had a working capital deficiency of $1.4 million and just $32,000 in cash, down from $2.5 million at the beginning of the year.

ADexact attracts $5.5 million investment
September 18, 2001

ADexact has closed a $5.5 million round of financing, led by RBC Capital Partners' information technology fund.

In the release, ADexact CEO David Roussain said the money would be used "to complete our [product] trial and to fuel deployment in the U.S."

The managing director of the fund is Richard Black, director of Open Text and member of the advisory board of Waterloo's Tech Capital Partners. From the release it looks like fund director Greg Connor is the one working most closely with ADexact.

ADexact also announced that PixStream co-founder and Sandvine CTO Marc Morin had joined its advisory board. ADexact was founded by another PixStream co-founder, Stephen Bacso.

STOCK REPORT: Is this the bottom?
September 2001

Well, it was RIM's 3rd-best month so far this year. Other than that...

For the month of September:

Gensel Biotech [CDNX: GSB] +25% (4 cents)
Finline [CDNX: FIN] +25% (3 cents)
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RIM [TSE: RIM] -3%
Dalsa [TSE: DSA] -7%
Open Text [TSE: OTC] -7%
RecycleNet [OTC: GARM] -17%
MKS [TSE: MKX] -20%
Virtek [TSE: VRK] -21%
GUARD [CDNX: GUA] -22%
RDM [CDNX: RC] -24%
Descartes [TSE: DSG] -27%
Com Dev [TSE: CDV] -29%
Turbosonic [OTCBB: TSTA] -31%
Navtech [OTCBB: NAVH] -50%
CME Telemetrix [CDNX: YME] -56%

Over the last 12 months, the only company here whose stock has gone up is Open Text. The only other company whose stock haven't lost at least half its value in that time is Dalsa. It's down 43%. And the only other companies on this list whose shares haven't lost at least three-quarters of their value are TurboSonic (-58%) and MKS (- 64%).

Year-to-date, Com Dev shares are now the biggest decliner, losing 86% of their value so far in 2001. That edges out Finline's 85% drop. Descartes shares are off 81%.

I've stopped tracking Treasury International here. Pretensions aside, it isn't a tech company now and never really was, although it did make half an effort to get on the Internet gravy-train back when there was such a thing (or shortly after, actually). Its software development expenses for the first half of fiscal 2002 were only US$7,700.

Finline did close its reverse takeover of Tekron (see the last two digests) and now owns 79% of the company which trades on the ever- flaky U.S. over-the-counter bulletin board. Tekron's share price has fallen more than 60% in the weeks since the deal closed, but it still has a market value about three times that of Finline. Finline insiders also gave themselves 2.8 million new shares in the company as repayment for a purported $400,000 in loans (and interest) that they had made to keep Finline afloat.

Companies based elsewhere with development offices in Waterloo were all below the line for the second straight month:

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MDR Switchview [CDNX: MSW] -6%
VoiceIQ [CDNX: VIQ] -17%
Network Assoc [Nasdaq: NETA] -19%
CheckFree [Nasdaq: CKFR] -23%
Sybase [NYSE: SY] -32%
Engineering.com [CDNX: EGN] -36%
Cyberplex [TSE: CX] -37%
Siebel [Nasdaq: SEBL] -40%
CacheFlow [Nasdaq: CFLO] -42%
CVF Technologies [Amex: CNV] -43%

MKS quarter holds steady
September 10, 2001

MKS' results for the quarter ended July 31 (Q1 02) looked very much like its Q4 numbers. Sales were US$6.6 million, down only 1.5% from Q4 and up just 2% from a year ago. Expenses climbed 3.4% sequentially, resulting in a loss from operations of $1.4 million -- just as in the previous quarter. R&D expenses climbed 34% from Q4 to US$2.0 million, offset by a decline in G&A costs.

The SCM business segment contributed US$3.9 million in sales or 58% or revenue while the interoperability side brought in the remaining US$2.8 million -- all exactly as they were in Q4.

One significant change was that the interoperability segment saw its profits drop from US$1.1 million in Q4 to US$432,000. MKS laid off 12 people from the IO unit following the end of the quarter.

The company's cash position declined US$1.8 million over the quarter to US$7.2 million. MKS expects that it will have enough cash to meet its needs for at least the next year.

The annual general meeting was postponed until this month. It had been scheduled for September 11.

Navtech lays off 20% to cut costs
September 14, 2001

For the quarter ended July 31 (Q3 01), Navtech reported a net loss of US$585,000 on sales of US$1.7 million. Working capital deficiency grew to US$672,000.

In August, the company initiated a cost-cutting program and cut more than 20% of its workforce. It also close its very expensive sales office in Denver. Navtech is cutting the number of trade shows it will attend and has renegotiated its contract with its largest communications supplier.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

• The semi-annual Go High Tech Stay Local Career Fair -- which still doesn't have a Web page I can direct you to for details -- is being held this Tuesday and Wednesday on the UW campus at Fed Hall.

• Sandvine, looking to break the Waterloo Technology Campus jinx, has signed on with the Cora Group to move into a 27,000 square-foot facility now being built on the Albert Street site. Last year, MKS and Cyberplex became the first occupants of the Tech Campus, and both companies saw their fates nosedive shortly thereafter. Sandvine predecessor PixStream had also occupied space on the site before it was shut down by Cisco.

• Doug Newman, COO and CFO of RDM had been given the CEO job vacated by Mike Carr in May. The company also announced that it had hired Brenda Bowman as director of marketing and product strategy. Bowman had been product marketing director at Descartes before leaving to join ProCure, a Cyberplex subsidiary that was recently acquired by BCE Emergis. Former marketing VP David Lant, whose title was downgraded to director of product marketing, has left the company.

• Last month, I mentioned the vanishing management bio page at PrinterOn. Linda Gregorio, who began as sales VP and then became VP of corporate strategy has left the company, but current sales VP, and former VP of strategic alliances Steve Hearn is still there.

• Aivars Lode, who was replaced as Descartes president last month, has now left the company entirely. [UPDATE: Descartes now says that Lode -- who it listed as its president for over a year -- was, in fact, never president. More about this next month.]

• According to the National Post, RIM CFO Dennis Kavelman e-mailed a "point-by-point rebuttal" to a negative research report by an analyst from Dundee Securities. Unfortunately, he chose to send this information only to selected analysts and "members of the Canadian investing community," according to the Post. The e-mail wasn't posted on RIM's Web site or sent out in a release, so everyone other than those chosen few was kept in the dark.

• For the year ended July 31, EMJ reported net income of $4.4 million on sales of $197.5 million. Sales were up 19% from fiscal 2000, although a decline in margins reduced the gains in gross profits to 9%. All of the company's profits for the year, plus an additional $2.5 million from previously retained earnings -- were paid to shareholders through dividends in 2001. At year-end the company had working capital of $12.7 million.

• From a Forbes Magazine article in September: "John Chen sees the future of Sybase not in Emeryville, Calif., where the once-high- flying database maker is headquartered, but in the college town of Waterloo, Ont., home to 200 employees in a Sybase division called iAnywhere."

• iAnywhere also just introduced its "always available" Mobile Mail product that works with devices using the Palm OS, Windows CE and Pocket PC, and Symbian EPOC.

• I missed this at the time, but in the quarter ended April 30 Com Dev paid over $3 million to settle a lawsuit. No details were provided. That's about 10% of the money it raised in that quarter through a share offering.

• Dale Gass, one of two former MKS employees (along with David Rowley) who founded Pantellic Software, creators of PhotoPoint was named emerging entrepreneur of the year for the Atlantic region. PhotoPoint was a dot-com bomb that raised nearly $30 million in funding, got caught up in the 'go big or go home' world, and having failed to do the former, has now done the latter. Gass reacquired PhotoPoint this summer and moved it back to Halifax from California. Back in 1998, the company's business operations were run out of Rowley's home in Kitchener while Gass oversaw development in Nova Scotia. Rowley, who is no longer with Pantellic, was eventually replaced as president of PhotoPoint by a former Taco Bell executive who had also run Universal Studios Hollywood (and who left PhotoPoint earlier this year to run a chicken restaurant chain).

• JPH International has signed a deal with the City of St. John's, Newfoundland to install its SuiteResponse CRM product. JPH just announced that SuiteResponse now supports languages other than English, which might come in handy in St. John's.

• Dalsa has opened a sales and support office in Tokyo and added two more Japanese distributors.