Actuate Swings To Profit, But Sales Remain FlatActuate Swings To Profit, But Sales Remain Flat

Actuate achieved a profit in the fourth quarter in 2004, but sales remained flat from the same period a year prior, the maker of reporting software said after market close Thursday.

The company reported earnings of $1.2 million on revenue of $27.4 million for the quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2003, Actuate reported a loss of $1.2 million on identical sales of $27.4 million.

For the full year of 2004, Actuate earned $1.3 million on sales of $104.7 million, compared with a loss of $4.5 million on revenue of $104.5 million in 2003.

Actuate undertook cost-cutting efforts in earnest last year, primarily through workforce reductions. The layoffs impacted workers from almost every part of Actuate's operations.

The company did not provide earnings or sales projections for any part of 2005, but said it's seeing sales traction with its tools designed for specific business processes, especially its Customer Self Service and Financial Performance Management applications.

Actuate garnered attention last year through the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) initiative, an ongoing push to develop an open-source tool that can enable J2EE applications with built-in reporting capability.