Financial Update: Computer Sciences In $2 Billion Deal. Cray Reports Results. Ziptronix Secures Financing.

November 3, 2000

SHORT TAKES

COMPUTER SCIENCES-BAE IN $2 BILLION DEAL

New York, N.Y. — Information technology services company Computer Sciences Corp. said on Wednesday it signed a $2.2 billion information technology agreement with British defense contractor BAE Systems Plc. The six-year agreement, which extends to November 2006, supersedes a current contract between the two companies scheduled to expire in March 20004. Computer Sciences will now manage BAE’s information technology infrastructure in the United States and the United Kingdom. BAE was formed last year when Marconi Electronic Systems and British Aerospace merged.

CSC will manage the full range of information technology operations on a transatlantic basis, from mainframe and mid-range computers, servers and desktops, to wide and local area networking, Internet services, help-desk, applications support and procurement. With this expanded BAE Systems contract, CSC has announced new business awards of more than $8.9 billion since the beginning of its fiscal year on April 1.

CRAY INC. REPORTS THIRD QUARTER RESULTS

Seattle, WASH — Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. reported results for the company’s third quarter. For the third quarter ended September 30, 2000, Cray Inc. reported revenues of $33.7 million, compared to revenues of $850,000 for the third quarter of 1999. Exclusive of imputed interest and amortization of expenses related to the acquisition of the Cray business unit assets, the company reported a net loss of $3.9 million, or ($0.12) per share, compared to a net loss of $13.9 million, or ($0.59) per share in the year ago period. Including the $2.2 million in imputed interest and amortization expenses, the net loss for the third quarter of 2000 was $6.1 million, or ($0.18) per share. The company continues to invest heavily in R&D, with expenses of $13.3 million, or 39 percent of total revenue, for the third quarter. “As we stated in August, we expected a slower third quarter due to the schedule of product upgrade introductions and the likely timing of orders, and a stronger fourth quarter. We continue to expect resumed strength in the fourth quarter,” stated Jim Rottsolk, president and CEO. The company also reported EBITDA of $2.0 million for the quarter. The company expects EBITDA to be solidly positive for the full year, as expected increases in sales drive EBITDA substantially higher in the fourth quarter.

For the nine-month period ending September 30, 2000, the company reported revenues of $84.7 million, compared to revenues of $1.5 million for the prior-year period. Exclusive of imputed interest and amortization expenses, the company reported a net loss of $6.9 million, or ($0.22) per share, compared to a net loss of $27.4 million, or ($1.31) per share in the year-ago period. Including imputed interest and amortization expenses, the company reported a net loss of $11.4 million, or ($0.36) per share for the nine months ended September 30, 2000. “The third quarter was focused on building for the future, both on the product side and the applications side,” continued Rottsolk. “We plan to announce significantly enhanced versions of the successful Cray SV1 product line very soon, and to begin shipping the new versions in the second quarter of 2001. We expect strong contributions from the Cray T3E line in the fourth quarter and through next year. Visibility on the order pipeline is better now than three months ago. The full CMOS-based Cray MTA system is slated to begin shipping in the mid-to-late 2001 timeframe. The Cray SV2, our largest development program, continues to proceed on schedule and is starting to attract real interest from outside as well as inside of our customer base.” “On the applications side, we announced pioneering collaborations with two of the world’s leading manufacturing software companies. Cray Inc. and MSC.Software achieved a revolutionary 900 percent performance increase that will make it possible to improve time to market, automobile ride and handling characteristics for automotive companies worldwide. With MCube, a French firm, we are attacking the complex and economically significant problem of alleviating wind noise from side mirrors and other structures,” Rottsolk said. “We are also actively investigating promising opportunities in the genomics and bioinformatics fields.”

“As projected, during the third quarter we captured our first order from Japan,” according to Rene Copeland, vice president of sales and marketing, “The Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology ordered a 128-processor Cray T3E system. We also had an important order from the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center that calls for delivery of a 32-processor enhanced Cray SV1 system, and includes an option for a next-generation Cray SV2 system. The U.S. Navy order we announced in the second quarter includes an upgrade to a Supercluster of four coupled Cray SV1ex systems. We still expect to capture our second customer for an all-CMOS MTA system later this year,” Copeland said. Copeland said Cray Inc. held additional meetings of its new Customer Advisory Board, including the first in Japan, and in October hosted the first Cray User Group (CUG) conference since the combined Cray Inc. was formed in April 2000. “These meetings were extremely useful,” he said. “With each passing month, we are seeing a greater comfort level and sense of excitement about Cray Inc. Customers are surprised that we’ve come so far, so quickly,” he added. “We expect to have a heightened presence at the annual SC2000 high-performance computing conference in early November.” Go to http://www.cray.com for more information on the company.

ZIPTRONIX SECURES $6.5 MILLION IN FINANCING

Research Triangle Park, N.C. — Ziptronix, Inc., an innovator in wafer-scale semiconductor integration, announced it has raised $6.5 million in its first round of venture capital financing. The company is a spin-off of Research Triangle Institute. It is based on a new technology to integrate semiconductors of many types, materials, and functions within existing semiconductor wafer fabrication processes. With Ziptronix, electronics firms can achieve high levels of circuit integration at low power, high speeds, and low cost. Atlanta-based Alliance Technology Ventures is the lead investor in this initial financing round. Mike Slawson, General Partner at Alliance Technology Ventures led the investment team. “The business implications of the process are enormous,” according to Bob Markunas, VP of Marketing for Ziptronix. “We can integrate fiber optics directly with digital signal processors on one chip. We can integrate gallium arsenide power amplifiers with silicon processors in a single chip package. This technology makes single chip cell phones, computers, and PDAs possible.”

The company plans to license the technology to large semiconductor firms, to produce integrated parts for electronic firms, and eventually to produce standard parts employing the Ziptronix technology. Initially the company will co-develop parts for large semiconductor firms. According to Ziptronix CEO Bill Clark, “We offer the electronics industry the ability to integrate multiple semiconductor wafers without individually packaging the chips first. Two proprietary Ziptronix technologies form the basis for the breakthrough process: room temperature wafer bonding and backside processing. These technologies were invented by RTI researchers and the associated patents and applications have been assigned to Ziptronix by RTI.” Paul Enquist, Ziptronix VP of Research & Development, explains that, “the Ziptronix process starts with a ‘host wafer’ containing many chips. Then, other wafers or individual chips are bonded to the host at room temperature. The substrate from the second wafer or individual chips is then removed, leaving only a few microns containing the active electronics. Electrical interconnects are then made between the host and the bonded wafer or die using a standard via-based interconnect process identical to that used in semiconductor fabrication facilities to electrically interconnect different layers of a single wafer. The process can be repeated multiple times. The end result is an integration of what is currently many chips into a single chip.” Ziptronix consists of nine founders led by CEO Bill Clark, VP of Marketing Bob Markunas and VP of Research and Development Paul Enquist. The new company is part of RTI’s technology commercialization initiative.

PROVER ESTABLISHES BUSINESS OPERATIONS IN THE U.S.

San Mateo, CALIF. — Prover Technology, the leading provider of commercially packaged proof engines, announced the establishment of its U.S. based, wholly owned subsidiary, Prover Technology Inc. Prover Technology Inc. will provide sales, marketing and support for the company’s industry recognized proof engines. The new subsidiary is located in San Mateo, at the northern end of Silicon Valley. The headquarters remains in Stockholm, Sweden. Prover Technology is one of the leading companies in the area of formal verification. Building on Prover Technology’s success in Europe, Prover Technology Inc. will significantly expand its operations in the U.S., using a combination of Prover Technology branded products and strategic partnerships that will extend its commercial proof engines, Prover Plug-In, into new markets. The company will primarily focus on business collaborations with major tool providers within the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) and CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) markets. Arne Boralv, who has been responsible for driving business development for the EDA market, will serve as President of Prover Technology’s business operations in the U.S.

“We are right now at forefront of a major new opportunity. Companies are eagerly seeking new and more efficient ways to ensure the correctness of their mission critical systems, and we find many of them in the U.S., said Arne Boralv. “Every day, Prover Technology and our customers demonstrate how proof engines and formal verification can fundamentally and profitably change the way system developers verify the correctness of complex computer systems. The formation of Prover Technology Inc. underscores our commitment to the US market and brings us even closer to our US customers.” Prover Technology anticipates that it is going to be as common to use development tools in systems development as using word processor when writing documents. In the same context they believe that it will be as common to have a proof engine integrated into a systems development tool as having a spell checker integrated in a word processor. “Companies will no longer be able to justify that 60% of development time of complex systems goes into testing, and yet they can only claim that the system works. By integrating our powerful proof engines into a systems development tool or environment, testing time could be reduced to a mere 10% and present the companies with the critical evidence that the systems are correct,” said Arne Boralv. For more information, see Prover Technology’s web site at http://www.prover.com .

TURBOLINUX FILES STATEMENT FOR IPO

San Francisco, CALIF. — Turbolinux, Inc., a provider of Linux software solutions and services, today announced that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to the proposed initial public offering of its common stock. All of the shares will be sold by Turbolinux. Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown will lead manage the underwriting group, with Dain Rauscher Wessels, SG Cowen and WR Hambrecht + Co. serving as the co-managers. Turbolinux is headquartered near San Francisco and has offices around the world. Turbolinux develops Linux-based software solutions for Internet and enterprise computing infrastructure, including reliable, available and scalable operating systems for workstations and servers and software clustering solutions for computing traffic management and peer-to-peer distributed computing.

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective.

IBM BOARD APPROVES SHARE BUYBACK

New York, N.Y. — International Business Machines Corp., the world’s largest computer maker, said its board of directors authorized a buyback of $3.5 billion of IBM shares. That is in addition to a $3.5 billion share buyback approved by IBM’s board earlier this year, with $750 million left from that authorization, a spokeswoman said.

IBM at the end of the third quarter had 1.8 billion diluted shares outstanding. IBM shares rose $5-3/16 to $98-1/2 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, climbing back from an 18-month low of $87 set last week.

PENTIUM 4 WILL PASS PENTIUM III IN EARLY 2002

San Diego, CALIF. — Sales of Intel’s Pentium 4 microprocessor will ramp up faster previously forecast, with the new chip overtaking the mainstream Pentium III in early 2002, company officials said in a webcast Wednesday. Earlier predictions had put the crossover point for the Pentium 4, which is scheduled to debut on Nov. 20, in late 2002. CEO Craig Barrett said the revenue growth target for its core business Intel Architecture unit, which accounts for about 80 percent of revenues, is about 10 percent per year. The remainder of the company, Santa Clara, Calif., is devoted to emerging networking and communications businesses, forecast to grow at a 50 percent rate. Company-wide, Barrett said, revenue is forecast to grow in the “high teens.”

Earlier this week, rumors had rumbled through financial markets suggesting that Intel would lower guidance for the fourth quarter, but company officials gave no indication of backing off their forecasts. The company’s strained relationship with memory designer Rambus Inc. also was apparent as officials blamed that company’s technology for several production glitches. “One of the problem areas this year was RDRAM,” said Paul Otellini, general manager of the Intel Architecture group. “Some of the stumbles we had over the year had to do with embracing this technology.” An internal Intel document cited in a report by Electronics Buyers’ News, a CMP Media Inc. publication, this week said that Intel planned to pare back its use of Rambus technology. CFO Andy Bryant noted that Intel’s spending was running at about 26 percent of revenue, substantially higher than the 20 percent rate four years ago. He said that the company was investing heavily in its emerging businesses and it would try to maintain the current level.

ALANCO ANNOUNCES FIRST QUARTER RESULTS

Scottsdale, ARIZ. — Alanco Technologies Inc. reported financial results for its fiscal year 2001 first quarter, ended Sept. 30, 2000. Reflecting the company’s prior year business transition from an environmental company to a data storage company, the quarterly sales comparisons represent revenue contributed only by the company’s data storage businesses. First quarter sales revenue was $2,746,400, compared to zero in the same quarter of the prior year, since the company was not engaged in the data storage business prior to October 1999. The net loss for the quarter amounted to $267,400, or $.04 per share, compared to a net loss of $119,800, or $.02 per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 1999. The loss for the quarter was attributable to significant marketing and sales staff additions required to implement the company’s SanOne Storage Area Network (SAN) market development program.

Robert R. Kauffman, Alanco chairman and chief executive officer, commented, “Last year we divested virtually all of Alanco Environmental’s previous businesses, repositioning the company into the network data storage industry through acquisitions of Arraid Inc. and Excel/Meridian Data, as well as our internal development of the SanOne Storage Area Network (SAN) business. “Our fiscal first quarter, ending Sept. 30, 2000, represents the financial debut of our new Alanco Technologies Inc., a provider of network data storage solutions from Arraid, Excel/Meridian and SanOne. We are very pleased with our first quarter results, which reflect sales for the three-month period about equal to the total data storage sales for the entire prior fiscal year. “In fiscal year 2001, our objective will be aggressive sales growth, reflecting our new opportunities in the dynamic data storage market, with our primary goal to achieve operating profitability.” Alanco Technologies Inc., headquartered in Scottsdale, is a publicly owned company focused on the high-growth storage networking industry. Alanco Technologies companies provide comprehensive Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions from SanOne; complementary Network Attached Storage (NAS) from Excel/Meridian Data; and storage upgrade solutions for legacy computer systems from Arraid.

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