Bright Days Await SunPower

In December 1999, IGC's stock soared as high as $4,900 on a split-adjusted basis, but for much of the past year, it has treaded water between $8 and $10. It closed trading Tuesday at $9.14, thanks in part to an overall updraft in Nasdaq stocks.

"On-demand" is an emerging market that could become a disruptive force or, like B2B, devolve into an empty buzzword. It usually refers to the kind of browser-based, pay-as-you-go business-software model pioneered -- and dominated -- by Salesforce.com .

ICG Chief Executive Walter Buckley pointed to a recent report from research firm IDC that said on-demand software spending is forecast to grow at an annual rate of 21% to $10.9 billion by 2009, from $5.5 billion last year. "The on-demand model will account for this year about one third of all software sales, and that's up significantly over the past five years," he said at the G4 conference.

Buckley said the market value of its nine core companies is about 1.7 times their revenue over the past 12 months, but he hopes their value will increase to three or four times revenue over the next few years. At the same time, he anticipates their collective revenue to grow by 25% to 30% during that period.

In the second quarter alone, revenue of eight of the nine core companies (of which IGC owns an average of 45%) grew by 38%, while EBITDA grew 55%, Buckley said. However, IGC still showed an operating loss of $7.1 million, equal to nearly half of its $16 million in revenue.

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