STOCK WATCH

Wang Global

Wang Global beat Wall Street expectations for the quarter ended 31 December 1998, despite posting a loss after restructuring charges and expecting to increase job cuts to 3,100. The software and services supplier turned in revenue of $1 billion and profit of $88.3 million. After restructuring and operating charges of $41.5 million, Wang generated a net loss of $16.4 million.

Bull

Guy de Panafieu, chairman of Bull, indicated that a significant profit would not be achieved until 2000, as it announced FF17 million profit for 1998 and sales of FF24.9 billion.

De Panafieu said future growth at the French server, software and smart card manufacturer would come through integration and other services - which represented 44 per cent of total sales - rather than in servers.

NCD

Network Computing Devices (NCD) has reported greater losses than expected for the fourth quarter ended 31 December 1998. The company, which warned late last year that losses would be slightly larger than the $2.2 million it reported in the quarter before, posted a net loss of $5.64 million and revenue of $26.2 million.

Viglen

Viglen PC unit shipments eased one per cent for the six months ended 31 December 1998 compared with the same period in 1997, despite a move from off-the-page sales into higher margin networking.

Viglen chairman Alan Sugar indicated the mail-order business will represent less than 10 per cent of the company's turnover for the current financial year.

Canon

Canon has increased its pre-tax profit by 2.2 per cent as strong sales in the US and Europe offset weaknesses in Japan and other Asian countries.