Reuters' Grigson Corrects Erroneous Dow Jones Report, Talks Up 3000 Xtra, Knowledge
[From Shore Senior Analyst Jack McConville]: Dow Jones Newswires mistakenly reported that Reuters chief financial officer, David Grigson, forecast a 2004 revenue decline of seven percent to nine percent for the market data vendor. He was referring to a longstanding forecast for this year, not next. His remarks were made at a Morgan Stanley investor conference in Barcelona today. Reuters will issue a 2004 revenue forecast in January and will have more to say when 2003 results are made public on February 17. Grigson had a lot to say about a new hosted version of Reuters flagship 3000 Xtra application that will eliminate the need for Reuters hardware and software on a user�s site, will reduce bandwidth needs and will work on legacy PC�s. The ultimate objective is to lower the user�s total cost of ownership, a problem that has plagued the vendor for the past several years. Reuters Knowledge is another new product that has been hyped to investors for most of this year. It�s a browser-based service aimed at investment bankers and research analysts and is currently being tested at 2,000 customer sites.