CA says fiscal 4Q revenue, profits down

CA Technologies, Long Island's largest company by stock market value, Thursday said its fiscal fourth quarter revenue and profits slipped as the aging software giant tries to remake itself by focusing on newer, more innovative programs.

The company, which sells mainframe, security and other software to large corporations, said net income for the quarter dropped 56 percent to $107 million, or 23 cents per share, in the three months that ended in March, compared with the same period last year. Sales dipped 3 percent, to $1.108 billion.

"Revenue is still not where we would like it to be, and we will not be satisfied until we are driving meaningful growth for our company and our shareholders," said CA chief executive Mike Gregoire, who took over the company nearly 18 months ago.

The results did, however, beat the expectation of analysts, who had predicted sales of $1.096 billion. Nonetheless, CA's stock fell about 3 percent Thursday, to $29.05.

CA released its annual sales forecast along with the earnings, saying it expected revenue to fall 1 to 2 percent during its 2015 fiscal year, to between $4.43 billion and $4.49 billion. The company also announced plans to repurchase up to $1 billion in common stock.

The company's revenue has now dipped for eight straight quarters. To reverse that trend, Gregoire said CA needs to look beyond its core mainframe businesses and become faster and more innovative.

As part of that effort, CA has undertaken a sweeping restructuring, including laying off about 1,800 people and replacing many with engineers who better understand cloud and mobile software.

On Wednesday, the company announced it had hired Silicon Valley veteran Amit Chatterjee, the founder and chief executive of Hara Software, Inc., to run its enterprise unit. He replaces Peter Griffiths, who has left the company "to pursue other interests."

The stock market value of Islandia-based CA is roughly $13.46 billion. It has about 1,500 employees on Long Island and close to 12,700 employees worldwide.