Pitney Bowes Posts Lower Q2 Numbers; Stock Stamped Down by Wall Street

Today’s quarterly report by Pitney Bowes (PBI), parent company of Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI, aka MapInfo/Group 1) was sobering, to say the least, and the company’s stock declined over 12% on the news. By contrast, Trimble’s lower earnings report this week sent their stock up over 11%. Perhaps its all in the way you report the news.

Revenue and earnings for PBBI or the broader "Business Solutions" division of PB are not easily discerned from the statement released by the company. In general, however, mailstream services revenue declined 6 percent, management services revenue declined 8 percent, mail services increased 4 percent, and marketing services revenue declined 17 percent. Somewhere hidden in those numbers are the results for PBBI. The company also issued revised guidance for the remander of 2009: "Worldwide consolidation in the financial services industry and slowness in the retail sector continued to adversely impact the sales and renewal of software licenses. Uncertainty surrounding the economy has resulted in many large multi-national organizations changing their approval policies for capital expenditures, which has lengthened the sales cycle… The company has not seen indications that economic and business conditions in mail-intensive industries will improve this year and has also seen further declines in some key geographies."