eGain Communications Corp. shuffled the deck in its executive suite after reporting a sharp drop-off in fiscal fourth-quarter revenues and earnings Thursday.
The company announced that CFO Harpreet Grewal will step down at the end of the month, though he will remain a special adviser to chairman and CEO Ashutosh Roy. Eric Smit, currently vice president of finance and operations at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based eGain, will succeed Grewal as CFO.
No explanation was given for Grewals departure. Though on Thursday, eGain released fiscal fourth quarter earnings for the quarter ended June 30 that showed how much the companys business has fallen off year-to-year.
Quarterly revenues were down from $14.1 million to $6.3 million year-to-year, with the fall-off sharpest in license revenues, down from $7.5 million to $2.8 million.
Annual revenue fell from $53.4 million in fiscal 2002 to $30.4 million in fiscal 2003. Fiscal year license revenues fell from $24.3 million to $10 million.
EGains net loss increased from $22.6 million in last years fourth quarter to $57.5 million this year, though much of that was attributed to one-time impairment charges. The companys fiscal year losses ended up at $166.1 million, up from $127.4 million last year.
Still, eGain executives pointed to $800,000 in booked license fees that werent recognized as revenue in the quarter as evidence that the companys business is rebounding. They also noted that revenue increased sequentially, up from $5.9 million in the fiscal third quarter.
“What is encouraging is that our license revenue almost doubled over the March quarter,” said Roy in a statement.
Grewal said eGain was committed to breaking even by the end of the year, though he wont stay to see the company through.
In June, eGain released eGain Knowledge, a knowledge management application for contact centers. The company expects to release version 6.0 of its products in the December quarter, Roy said.
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