Income, Revenue Down for Eclipsys

Profit and revenue fell during the third quarter of 2009 for hospital and physician software vendor Eclipsys Corp., compared with the same period a year ago.


Profit and revenue fell during the third quarter of 2009 for hospital and physician software vendor Eclipsys Corp., compared with the same period a year ago.

The Atlanta-based vendor had net income of $3.9 million, down 47% from $7.4 million a year ago, excluding a one-time $80 million tax benefit in 3Q 2008. Quarterly revenue fell 5% to $125.5 million.

Eclipsys during the third quarter of 2009 repaid $45 million of debt on its credit facility. The funds came from available cash, operating cash flows and $23.6 million from the sale of auction rate securities. The company ended the quarter with $122.1 million in cash and $86 million in long-term investments.

For the first nine months of 2009, Eclipsys had a net loss of nearly $1.1 million. That compares with net income of $16.2 million during the same period last year excluding the tax benefit. Nine-month revenue fell less than 1% to $385.5 million. Systems and services revenue increased almost 2% but hardware sales dropped 61%.

Eclipsys also announced a major upgrade for seven-hospital North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. The client previously used the vendor's patient financial, registration and scheduling systems, as well as the legacy Eclipsys 7000 clinical system. Now it will implement the Sunrise Clinical Manager core electronic health records system, plus CPOE, pharmacy, emergency care, critical care, clinical documentation and clinical analytics modules, as well as clinician and patient Web portals. The financial and clinical applications will be assessable via single-sign-on technology.

The investment firm Caris & Company raised its rating of Eclipsys' stock from Average to Above Average. The stock price was 1.5% higher in morning trading on Nov. 6. More information is available at eclipsys.com.

--Joseph Goedert