Informix Stock Slides 35% on Expected Quarterly Loss

MENLO PARK —  Informix Corp. shares plunged 35% after the database software company said it expects a first-quarter loss because it focused too much on technology that customers aren’t yet buying.

Informix shares tumbled $5.22 to close at $9.91 Tuesday in Nasdaq trading.

Sales for the three months ended Sunday will be down as much as 36% from a year ago, the company said.

It blamed weak demand in Europe and its overemphasis on a product that offers a new way of searching databases by image or document rather than by word.

The focus on slow-selling new products left it open to increased competition from rival Oracle Corp., analysts said.

“They were a little bit ahead of themselves,” said Bruce Raabe of Collins & Co., which manages $300 million and owns Informix shares. “They need to come up with new products that companies are willing to pay for now.”

Informix said it spent too much sales and marketing time on the emerging object-relational technology for database searches, instead of focusing on its primary product, Online Database.

Wall Street was expecting Informix, the No. 5 maker of database software, to earn 13 cents a share, based on the average estimate of 22 analysts surveyed by IBES International Inc.

The company said it expects sales of $130 million to $145 million, down from $204 million in the year-earlier period. Analysts had expected $220 million, said Roxane Googin of Gruntal & Co. She said she expects the final loss to be about 30 cents a share.