Things have been worse
While the years since the HPES merger have been disappointing in terms of financial metrics, in some ways they've been pretty good to live through. Yes, we in Development have many complaints about infrastructure, processes, and so on, and the use of, and eventually migration away from, the HPE network has been a big, persistent pain in the ass. But the merger brought together a ton of really interesting people and a bunch of fun new toys.
It's very different than the grim MERANT years under Gary Greenfield, a CEO who seemed determined to piss customers off. Things were really quite bad in the 1998-2001 period. Morale was terrible, people were leaving, customers and analysts couldn't figure out what the company was doing. MERANT was a company that charged into the room, drew both pistols, emptied them into its feet, and proudly announced it had saved the day.
This was a poor year, but it was still a profitable one, even without taking the SUSE sale into account. (See the press release or presentation slides released today for details; they're available on the website.) EBITDA is down but EBITDA margin is up, which is encouraging. Even in a bad year Micro Focus makes money and pays dividends. And development remains strong, with new major releases coming out all the time. Obviously I'm biased, and perhaps I'm being foolishly optimistic, but I believe we'll return to the kinds of profit margins we enjoyed before the merger.
And in the meantime, my ESPP contributions will buy a lot of shares. Historically that's worked well for me.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
