Verint adjusts strategy as shares tumble on revenue shortfall
By Tova Cohen
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Shares in Israeli-American analytics firm Verint Systems Inc tumbled 13 percent on Thursday after the company posted third-quarter earnings that fell short of expectations, blaming delays in customer orders and a downturn in emerging markets.
Dan Bodner, chief executive of the company which provides software and hardware for security, surveillance and business intelligence, said Verint is seeing longer customer approval cycles, a trend that took it a couple of quarters to identify.
"We are making adjustments to our (marketing) strategy to reduce our dependency on large projects," Bodner said, adding Verint had started to offer cheaper, less comprehensive packages to more cost-conscious clients.
"It just takes too long for customers to make decisions when the numbers are big and budgets need to be justified," he said.
Verint's government security business has also faced difficulties in emerging markets, where slowing economies are pressuring state budgets, Bodner said.
In a statement issued after Wednesday's Wall Street close, Verint said third-quarter revenue reached $285.3 million, against an average analyst forecast of $299 million. Adjusted earnings per share of 78 cents missed estimates by 1 cent.
The shares were down 13 percent to a year's low of $40.40 at 1540 GMT.
Verint forecast revenue of between $1.15 billion and $1.19 billion for the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2016, up 5 percent on a constant-currency basis, and diluted EPS of $3.30 at the midpoint of its revenue outlook. Analysts had forecast EPS of $3.46 on revenue of $1.2 billion.
For fiscal 2017 Verint assumes revenue growth of 5 percent, an outlook that was "not inspiring", FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives told Reuters. He cut his price target for the share to $53 from $63 but maintained an "outperform" rating.
Ives said the company had lost focus when it started to concentrate on cyber security, a crowded market in which it had yet to prove itself. Yet Oppenheimer analyst Shaul Eyal saw opportunities for Verint after last month's Paris attacks, which underscored governments' need to enhance security.
As data is collected from a growing number of channels such as voice, video, email and social networks, Verint's monitoring and communications interception technology can collect, analyze and flag up suspicious activities, as well as recommending a course of action, Eyal said.
Events such as the Madrid train attacks in 2004 and the London Underground attacks in 2005 resulted in accelerated orders for Verint, Eyal noted.
(Editing by David Holmes)
