This column is for investors willing to take more risk and potentially receive more reward.  The stocks mentioned in this column are not recommended to buy or sell.  They're brought to your attention so you can investigate them further to determine if they fit your risk profile.  Most of the stocks will have less than $1 billion of market capitalization, have more volatility than other stocks, and oftentimes no earnings.  And some will have tremendous stories.

April 29, 2010 - Informatica Corp. (INFA-NASDAQ) provides enterprise data integration and data quality software and services in the United States and internationally. Its software handles various enterprise-wide data integration initiatives, including data warehousing, data migration, data consolidation, data synchronization, and data quality, as well as the establishment of data hubs, data services, cross-enterprise data exchange, and integration competency centers.

It also provides B2B Data Exchange, a software product for multi-enterprise data integration; Application Information Lifecycle Management, which helps IT organizations to manage every phase of the data lifecycle; Complex Event Processing that enables enterprises to detect, correlate, analyze, and respond to data-driven events; and Cloud, which consists of data integration cloud services and data integration cloud platform. In addition, the company offers product-related customer support, consulting, and education services.

Informatica serves the energy and utilities, financial services, government and public sector, healthcare, high technology, insurance, manufacturing, retail, services, telecommunications, and transportation sectors. The company distributes through direct sales, systems integrators, resellers, distributors, and original equipment manufacturers.

Its strategic partners principally include Accenture, Affecto, Hewlett-Packard, IPI Grammtech, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Teradata, and Wipro. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.

Informatica weathered the economic storms rather well. Revenues went from $391.3 million in 2007 to $455.7 million in 2008. Last year, they reached $500 million. This year, consensus from 14 analysts is for $592.12 million, then $672.61 million next year.

Earnings followed the same pattern. Last year, they were 91 cents a share. Consensus estimate for 2010 is $1.01, then $1.21 in 2011. Look for earnings in late April with the first quarter showing 23 cents a share, above the 19 cents in 2009's first period. For the second quarter, expect 25 cents, ahead of the 22 cents in last year's second.

Demand for data-integration software is behind the positive outlook. Corporations are upgrading thier information technology (IT) divisions, looking to increase efficiencies. INFA's data-integration programs let IT users enable existing systems in an inexpensive way. The company recently updated a version of its data-integration platform that has features for B2B data exchange and cloud computing. It also introduced a new program called Cloud 9. Cloud computing has grown in popularity as it allows companies to access software and hardware over the Internet rather than buying those elements and putting them in a data center.

INFA's also been buying other companies. Last month, the company purchased 29West Inc. which uses Ultra-Low Latency Messaging technology to provide zero-latency data delivery. It's current use is for financial services companies in their trading departments. INFA expects to increase applications for the program to non-financial industries like telecommunications and government agencies where instantaneous data integration would be highly utilized. In January, INFA bought Siperian, a software firm that has master data management infrastructure technology. With current programs and Siperian's, INFA can offer clients the ability to share master data across their networks. Last year, INFA acquired Agent Logic, a designer of complex-event processing software.

All the good news hasn't been lost on investors. With sales and earnings improving in a difficult economy, the stock price rose notably in the last year, going from a low of $11.40 to a recent high of $27.90. That's still well below the all-time high of $58.40 reached in 2000 when the company was still reporting negative earnings.

More numbers: While the Trailing P/E is almost 40, the Forward P/E is 21. Price to sales ratio is 4.43. Price to book is 4.55. Book value is $5.65. Operating margin was 17.96% in the last 12 months while Profit margin was 12.33%. Return on equity was a respectable 14.72% and Return on assets was 6.38%. Total cash is $354.46 million or $3.91 a share. Total debt is $201 million or about 29% of capital. Current ratio is 1.06. Beta is .76. There are 90.75 million shares outstanding with a Float of 89.66 million. Insiders own 1.14% of the stock while Institutions own almost 100%. There is no dividend.

Aggressive investors will be impressed with the stock's price recovery in the last 15 months and the continued growth in revenues and profits. However, the question is: has the stock run up to a level that already reflects all the good news? Or will it keep going as more acquisitions and new products are introduced? Only time will tell.

- Company Web site: www.informatica.com

- Ted Allrich