By Staff Report Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Santa Barbara-based business software firm QAD on March 11 shot back into the black with a $1.3 million profit for the fiscal year despite faltering revenue.

QAD ends its fiscal year Jan. 31, making its most recent results its 2010 year. Its $1.3 million profit was up sharply from the $23.7 million loss it saw the year before.

For fiscal 2010, revenue came in at $215.2 million, a drop from $262.7 million the year before. QAD profited $700,000 in the fourth quarter despite $5 million in signed-license revenue the company deferred for accounting reasons.

QAD expects $54 million in revenue for the current quarter but didn’t give a sales forecast for the rest of this year. “Given the continued uncertainty surrounding the global economic recovery, the company is not issuing full year guidance,” the company said in a release.

The company did say it had 26 orders worth more than $500,000 in the last quarter, including nine worth more than $1 million and three worth more than $2 million.

“We successfully navigated through a difficult economic environment by improving receivables and generating significant cash flow, which increased our cash balance by $13 million,” Karl Lopker, chief executive officer of QAD, said in a release. “At the same time, we advanced our product line and partnered with our manufacturing customers to help them deploy our solutions to capture growth opportunities and maximize profitability.”

QAD’s earnings came out after the markets closed. Shares slipped 1.6 percent to $5.53 on March 11.

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