Veritas fattens revenue in Q3

Software strength

Software maker Veritas enjoyed a strong third quarter, riding license and services sales en route to record revenue.

Veritas reported $451 million in revenue for the period ended Sept. 30. This marks a 23 percent increase over the $366 million posted in the same quarter a year ago.

"Leveraging the revenue upside, we delivered earnings well ahead of expectations and generated approximately $130 million in cash from operating activities, exiting the quarter with $2.3 billion in cash and short-term investments," said Ed Gillis, CFO at Veritas.

The company reported net income of $77.6 million in the third quarter versus $36.2 million in last year's Q3.

Veritas tends to be very conservative about breaking out its various product segments. This policy makes it difficult to tell how well new businesses such as clustering and server management are performing in comparison to its flagship backup and file system software businesses.

It did report that user licenses fees surged in the quarter. Veritas posted $290 million in license fee revenue compared to $241 million last year. Services also rose to $161 million versus $125 million last year.

In the fourth quarter, Veritas expects revenue between $480 to $490 million. ®