Sonic Foundry Reports First Quarter 2000 Financials

Sonic Foundry (http://www.sonicfoundry.com) announced that revenues grew 82% to $5.1 million for the first fiscal quarter ended December 31, 1999, from $2.8 million reported for the same period last year.

The company posted a net loss for the first quarter 2000 of $2.2 million, or $0.33 per share, compared with a net loss of $1.4 million, or $0.52 per share, for the comparable period last year. While gross margins improved, operating expenses such as the promotion of streaming media products and services, as well as investments in research and development to support the new Sonic Foundry Media Services division, drove expenses higher.

"We continue to see strong revenue growth from our key software products, ACID, Vegas and Sound Forge as well as interest in the new additions to our product line," said Rimas Buinevicius, Sonic Foundry's chairman and chief executive officer.

"Building on the success of these products, we are very excited about the potential for our Media Services division," he said. "We have received an enormous amount of interest in our media encoding services, and we believe our marketing efforts, as well as the interest we've had in implementing full-scale media production systems, will open additional doors with both the top-tier and middle-level media content owners. We expect Sonic Foundry Media Services revenues to grow at a much higher rate than our software revenues have traditionally grown."

During the quarter, Sonic Foundry's Media Services Division inked deals with LAUNCH.com and Atomic Pop.