BakBone Gets Back on Track

Backup specialist BakBone took a major step towards sorting out its finances last night, finally filing its outstanding 10Ks for 2004, 2005, and 2006 with the SEC.

I am extremely pleased to be able to say that we have filed our form 10K for the fiscal years 2004, 2005, and 2006,” said the BakBone CEO Jim Johnson, during a conference call. “This filing is the first and most challenging step for BakBone to take towards becoming a current filer with the SEC -- we filed this massive document today.”

BakBone has wrestled with a string of accounting problems dating back to 2004, when the firm announced it would restate earnings because of mistakes made while moving to U.S. GAAP standards from Canadian GAAP. Since then, BakBone has changed CEOs and accountants, got dropped from the Toronto Stock Exchange, and then from the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) because of blown filing deadlines. BakBone's stock currently trades on the pink sheets.

“This has been a long and resource-consuming process, and we still have work to do -- however, these three years were the most complex and challenging,” said Mike Compton, BakBone’s interim CFO, during last night’s conference call.

The finance chief explained that the company has now put “certain controls and processes” in place, which should make the audits of 2007, 2008, and 2009 much easier.”The implementation of our revenue management system has continued,” he added. “We will be fully utilizing this system globally for FY09, and we’re exploring the possibility of utilizing it for transactions in our FY08, if practicable.”

Despite BakBone’s 10K filings this week, the vendor was unable to offer a timeframe for filing its other outstanding fiscal years with the SEC.

”In this calendar year? I don’t think so,” said Compton, in response to a question from an analyst on last night’s call. “[But] we will be in the midst of forming our game plan starting tomorrow.”

The vendor also announced its unaudited results for the first quarter of 2009 last night, posting revenues of $14.2 million, a 7 percent increase on the same period last year, but a 21 percent decrease from the prior quarter.

”The fourth quarter was unusually strong due to our success in closing a single multimillion-dollar deal,” explained Johnson, adding that Q1 is typically a slower quarter for the vendor.Like a number of other storage vendors, BakBone is enjoying much stronger overseas sales at the moment. The backup specialist’s revenues in EMEA and Asia/Pacific grew, respectively, 20 and 24 percent year-over-year, compared to a 4 percent decrease in U.S. sales.Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.