PARIS, May 14, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Fi SYSTEM (Euroclear 6588), the integration and consulting company, specializing in e-business and new technology projects, presents turnover figures for the first quarter of 2002 for the whole of the Fi SYSTEM Group of EUR 10.8 million, of which EUR 10.74 for service activities alone.
Q1 2001 Q2 2001 Q3 2001 Q4 2001 Q1 2002
Turnover for service
activities(1) 15,5 12,9 9,2 9,4 10,74
Sequential growth + 8% - 17% - 29% + 2% + 14%
(1) The turnover for service activities includes the turnovers for Fi
SYSTEM France, Fi SYSTEM Belgium, Fi SYSTEM Italia, Fi SYSTEM UK
and the activities of Uovo Ltd., which joined the Group on
January 1st, 2002.
Growth in service activities shows internal and external quarterly sequential growth of more than 14%, despite the fall in prices in the whole of the sector since the start of 2002 and a difficult month of January, which was marked by a freezing or postponement of various IT expense commitments. These figures are a continuation of the improvement which was felt in the fourth quarter of 2001, and are a confirmation of Fi SYSTEM's capability of winning market share despite an environment which is still tense.
There are three reasons to explain this recovery of capacity for growth:
-- The recovery in demand for new technology services, with increasing demand for distributed architectures (J2EE & Microsoft .NET), Web-based applications (thin client) and company portals and intranets.
-- The Group's investment in the salesforce at the end of 2001, doubling the sales engineer force and the pre-sales capacity on flat-fee projects.
-- Fi SYSTEM's position in the market as one of the only companies today with the manpower, organizational and financial capacities for serving its clients in terms of all the services with which major companies wish to entrust a service-provider : consulting, technological expertise, technical expertise, flat-fee projects and application management.
For the whole of the quarter, 14 new key accounts chose Fi SYSTEM (6 for flat-fee services and 8 for consulting, technological expertise or technical assistance services). Fi SYSTEM signed or renewed its contracts with major Groups such as AGF, Air liquide, Alstom, Altadis, Answork, April aips, BNP-Paribas, Caisse des depots, CCB, Cegetel, CNCE, Credit Lyonnais, EADS, Eutilia, Fnac, Groupama, Gsk, Interail, La Poste, MAA, Mediapost, Michelin, Ministere de l'emploi, Orange, PPR, RATP, Rtl , SDV, SNCF , Societe Generale and VVF.
Fi SYSTEM is also one of the few integrators specializing in new technologies to have signed framework agreements with the purchasing services of key accounts such as Vivendi Universal or France Telecom.
The recovery of sequential growth, together with the cost-cutting methods initiated in September 2001, should allow, in a steady economic environment, breakeven point to be reached in the course of the third quarter of 2002. The first quarter should show a breakeven point in the region of EUR 15 million.
Access2Net, a capital-risk company in which Fi SYSTEM holds a 30.27% stake, made a successful entry onto the Marche Libre de la Bourse de Paris (Paris Stock Exchange) during the first quarter of 2002, on January 25th. Access2Net also went ahead with three new partial takeovers. Access2Net in fact entered the capital of DartWise (a new technology engineering and services company), MagicSoft (the editor of Magic Website, a universal software package for updating Internet websites) and Ypok (integrating IT systems into free software packages under Linux).
Ubicco's activity was marked by the launch of its new multi-access software solution, MoViE, which is now 100% compatible with NTT-Docomo's i-mode(TM) mobile technology. This technology will be commercialised in France by Bouygues Telecom among its clients.
The upcoming publications of the Fi SYSTEM Group will be on August 12th 2002 for the half-yearly audited turnover and September 16th for the audited half-yearly results.
About Fi SYSTEM, the I*Net Project Integrator
Fi SYSTEM, the Consulting and Services company for the realization and integration of I*Net solutions, places its 750 European team-members at the service of the projects of French and international key accounts in the areas of distributed architecture, Web-based (thin client) systems and multi-channel problems. The expertise that has been accumulated over the course of the past 10 years through more than 2000 projects and missions, allows Fi SYSTEM consultants to accompany clients in everything from consulting (technological, marketing and functional consulting) to application management, by proposing complete services for the realization of project ownership based on Web-linked technologies (J2EE and .NET application servers, opensource, technical frameworks, integrating information systems and dedicated software packages).
Fi SYSTEM was ranked number 1 integrator specializing in e-business and new technologies (2001 rankings from the PAC and Markess research agencies) in the French Top 20 and European Top 120 fastest growing companies, all sectors included, in the European Fast 500 Trophy, organized by Deloitte & Touche.
Fi SYSTEM has offices in France, the UK, Belgium and Italy. Fi SYSTEM, a member of the IT CAC 50, is registered on the Paris Stock Exchange (Nouveau marche de la Bourse de Paris - EUROCLEAR: 6588 ; Reuters: FISY.LN; Bloomberg: FIS NM) and is a member of the Euronext NextEconomy segment.