PeopleSoft Keeps Smiling as It Talks About the Quarter

So far, so good, thanks to new products, says one of the software company's execs.
By Joe Bousquin ,

Apparently, no one told

PeopleSoft

(PSFT)

that it's warning season.

While everyone on Wall Street has been waiting this week for the worst, including a

profit warning from

Oracle

(ORCL) - Get Report

, a PeopleSoft executive on Friday said things are humming right along at the enterprise software maker.

"Perhaps there's a bit of a 'knock-on-wood' aspect to it, and things could change, but I just definitely haven't seen an impact on the deals we're doing," said Stan Swete, senior vice president and head of the firm's efforts in customer relationship software, in an interview with

TheStreet.com

on Friday. "We're seeing opportunities for our products."

The company will officially kick off its new CRM product, which it claims is completely Internet-based, on Monday at a conference in Las Vegas. Leading up to that, the company has been busy building buzz for that product launch. The stock closed higher Friday, up $1.57, or 3.9%, at $41.92.

"I constantly get asked whether we're seeing an impact of the uncertain economic times, but as we said on our last earnings call, I've got to re-emphasize we're just not seeing any impact to date," Swete said. "The main impact we're seeing is that companies are just being more careful to ensure there's a real value to what they're buying, which is fine for us."

PeopleSoft was one of just a few software companies that beat Wall Street's expectations last quarter. The company also

defied expectations that it would lower its projections for the rest of the year.

On its conference call in April, PeopleSoft reiterated its financial guidance for 35% license-revenue growth during 2001, and earnings of 55 cents to 60 cents for the year. For the second quarter, the company stuck by its previous guidance of $155 million to $160 million in license revenue and earnings of 12 cents a share.

Analysts expect the company to earn 12 cents a share for its current quarter, which ends June 30, on total revenue of $505 million, according to

Multex.com

.

Swete on Friday said he thinks PeopleSoft has been able to weather the economic storm because of good timing with its product launches. Last fall, the company rolled out PeopleSoft 8, its line of Internet-enabled business software that has been praised for its functionality and has sold well.

But one hole in that line of do-everything business software, which is designed to run through a browser without any software code residing on a user's computer, was its CRM offering. That part of the software maker's suite still needed to be installed on a user's PC.

Now, with the announcement Monday, that will end.

"Today everyone puts a product in, and then they want to build access points for their customers and partners, so they have to build a Web site that allows that," Swete said. "Our products will be a Web site to start with. All you have to do is give those customers and partners access to it."

The follow-up rollout is helping PeopleSoft's business, Swete said, even as other companies struggle.

"Different companies are at different points in their product cycles. It profits PeopleSoft to be coming off a huge launch of innovative technology last September, and then following that up with this huge launch in June," Swete said. "Maybe the growth path in that case is a little bit different. Whatever it is, we see the opportunity out there."

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