UPDATE: Sungard just announced it'll put out 2009 earnings on March 15. That's four weeks later than last year, when they put out 2008 earnings on Feb. 19. After we called and asked around... No reason posted for the change.
EARLIER: Sungard, the private-equity-owned, Wayne-based financial/education/government software maker-and-data recovery company, hasn't said anything about earnings so far this year. The last three years in a row, it put out year-end numbers in mid-February.
Maybe the delay has to do with changes at the top. In January, chief financial officer Mike Ruane, who usually puts out the corporate numbers, moved over to take the cfo job at Sungard Availability Services, the data-recovery unit. In February, Availability chief executive Eric Berg left, and Sungard ceo Cristobal Conde moved temporarily into that job.
Sungard-watchers speculate the Availability unit is for sale. Jeff Wagner of Waypoint Advisory, Thornton, says the business "makes sense" for Hewlett Packard, Dell, EMC, maybe Verizon or Comcast, or other Big Tech firms looking to bulk up on corporate clients. "They could get maybe $5 billion" and still have the other three business lines. The current owners paid around $11 billion for all of Sungard back in 2005.