Sonic Foundry Reports Higher Sales and Fewer Losses

Aug. 5–With a growing client list and several new products on the market, Sonic Foundry reported Thursday that sales nearly doubled in the April-June quarter while losses were nearly cut in half.

Meanwhile, the Madison media presentation software company rolled out a new service: hosting and archiving presentations for its clients.

Sonic Foundry had a net loss of $1.1 million, or 3 cents a share, on $2.2 million in sales for its third fiscal quarter, an improvement from Sonic’s $1.6 million loss, or 5 cents a share, on $1.2 million in revenue for the same quarter last year.

Customers for its Mediasite systems — which synchronize audio, video and graphics for presentations over the Internet — ranged from Domino’s Pizza to Northrop Grumman to the South Africa Dept. of Health during the past quarter.

Sonic is building its sales force, with the hiring in July of Darrin Coulson as senior vice president of worldwide field operations and the addition of four other employees. The company now has 60 employees and expects to hire three more, said Rimas Buinevicius, chairman and chief executive officer.

The extra three will handle a new, key element of Sonic’s business: hosting the presentations created through use of the Mediasite system.

“For at least two years, it’s been identified in our business plans that a service component is going to be a critical element for us,” Buinevicius said. “It solves a problem for people.”

Up to now, customers who have purchased Mediasite systems have had to use their own servers or make their own arrangements to archive and webcast their presentations through servers owned by a third party.

Now, Sonic — which has been testing the concept with some of its clients — will record and archive presentations and make them available for play on demand.

Corporations and associations are among those most likely to use the service, Buinevicius said, rather than, for example, government agencies concerned about keeping content secure.

“This was the final piece of the puzzle that we needed to put out in order to get some of the customers to try the technology,” Buinevicius said.

He declined to say how much Sonic spent to gear up for the service, but said the cost of equipment has come down in recent years and Sonic’s location in the highly wired Network 222 building, 222 W. Washington Ave., also helped mitigate costs.

Sonic also recently released a new generation of Mediasite systems, including mobile recorders and those designed to handle video conferences.

Buinevicius projected the company will lose 1 cent per share in the current quarter and break even by the end of the calendar year.

Sonic shares closed down 4 cents Thursday, at $1.296 a share.

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