Pervasive plunges on earnings miss

Shares of Pervasive Software (Nasdaq: PVSW) plunged 40 percent Monday after the company reported a wider-than-expected loss and weak sales in its third quarter.

In early trading, Pervasive was off 4 7/16 to 6 1/2.

After market close Thursday, Pervasive reported a loss of $5.6 million, or 36 cents a share, excluding charges. Including charges, the company lost 37 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting a loss of 30 cents a share, according to earnings tracking firm First Call Corp.

Sales were sluggish at $12.6 million, down from $16 million in the third quarter a year ago.

The company said database revenue was weak and growth slowed for the company's Tango product. "Our revenues were affected by a low sales pipeline entering the quarter, the recent transition to new sales leadership, the reorganization of our domestic sales force that was completed during the quarter, and continued softness of the packaged client/server application market," said Ron Harris, president and CEO of Pervasive Software, in a statement.

This isn't the first time Pervasive has disappointed Wall Street. The company missed estimates in the second quarter. Investors also punished Pervasive after the company reorganized last October.

Despite the earnings miss, the company was optimistic. The company, which has $30 million in cash, restructured to focus on e-business applications and Web infrastructure markets. "We are staying the course with our investments in marketing programs, our telesales call center, and our product development plans, all of which are designed to leverage growth opportunities," said Harris.

According to Hoover's, Pervasive competes with Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), Informix (Nasdaq: IFMX), Sybase (Nasdaq: SYBS). Pervasive's Tango product competes with Allaire's (Nasdaq: ALLR) Cold Fusion product.