Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Our first question comes from the line of John Difucci with JPMorgan. Please proceed.
John Difucci – JPMorgan
Thank you. Hi Bert and Charlie.
Bert Winemiller
Hi, John.
John Difucci – JPMorgan
Could you help us out here a little bit, and I know we have had similar conversations, but you have given us a lot of information here, it does sound conflicting in some cases, you are saying that you expect fourth quarter revenue, actually the third quarter guidance is for an accelerating decline in revenue, realizing there is a lot of things and I appreciate going through what effects that, but even if fourth is up sequentially slightly, you could still see another increase in the declining rate year-over-year in revenue? At the same time, you are also saying that bookings and sales activity have improved, so if you can just – realize that you guys obviously have a lot more visibility into the accounting here than we can have, but can you help us out a little bit here to see if, are things getting less bad or are they getting a little better?
Bert Winemiller
Bad or a little better? Well obviously, we have had decreasing revenue for a number of quarters here. And we think that is a direct reflection of the marketplace CEOs and CFOs been under tremendous pressure, and having to cut cost, and basically freezing expenditures for investments, especially capital expenditures, and we have seen that.
At the same time, and I would say that we are seeing that being less bad, at the same time, what we are seeing is, an increasing awareness and a education in the market of the value of pricing.
And that is a reason we specifically mentioned, the Gartner report. And there is other venerable observers of our space that think that, you know as budgets, free-up and as companies entertain, innovative investments that one of the first investments they are to consider, is pricing optimization software. That said, everything that is going on in our space right now, is really payrolls in the big future market opportunity that we have.
And our assessment of the profile or the kind of companies that can use our software and achieve a high return on investment, has been validated by the Gartner report, and if you take that profile and you apply it to the target industry, the manufacturing distribution, and services that are our targets, big BTB transaction, dynamic pricing, negotiated deals, list pricing, contract optimization, you know the people that have complex pricing problems to solve, and you look at that profile, and the thousands of companies that are in those target markets.
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