MONTREAL, Aug. 28 ArtQuest International Alliances Inc., a leader in the development and marketing of software solutions for the graphic communications industry, today released its financial results for the second quarter of 2001. Despite the global economic slowdown and the drop in the printing sector, ArtQuest posted higher revenues for a fourth consecutive quarter. For the three-month period ended June 30, 2001, sales were $598,382, up 86% from sales of $322,094 for the same period last year. The net loss for the quarter ended June 30, 2001 was $1,340,150 ($0.06 per share), compared to $1,829,880 ($0.071 per share) for the same period in 2000. "Our sales have grown 73% over the last year despite an increasingly difficult economic climate, attesting to the quality of our products and their popularity worldwide,'' commented Mr. Michel Benoit, ArtQuest's Chief Executive Officer. "We continue to focus our efforts on the actualization of the strategic plan unveiled at our last annual meeting, namely on increasing sales and controlling costs in the short term. As part of our operating cost cutting program, we instituted salary cutbacks at our North American and European operations to make way for new personnel directly involved in revenue generating activities.” ArtQuest also worked on repositioning its product range to better respond to market demand in the graphic communications industry, which is actually going through a slowdown period. ArtQuest will market version 1.5 of its Crescendo range for servers and peripherals, destined for printers and prepress offices, in September, and will bring its JetBox for HP5000 for the quick print market onstream in the fourth quarter. ArtQuest will also participate in Chicago Print 01 show to promote its products and its PDF-IT language, the industrial PDF for the publishing market. Sales for the six-month period ended June 30, 2001 more than doubled to $1,455,012, up from $715,912 for the same period in 2000. The net loss for the six-month period ended June 30, 2001 was $1,992,492 ($0.0772 per share) compared to $3,211,142 ($0.1269 per share) for the same period in 2000. At June 30, 2001, the Company's liquid assets stood at $242,968 compared to $2,731,455 a year earlier. Given its current revenue level and burn rate, the Company requires short-term financing, and is currently in negotiations with financial partners to this end. 2001 HIGHLIGHTS - Signature of distribution agreements with Mag-D-Print for Spain ($450,000), Argos AG for France ($450,000) and Stanford Mall for Belgium ($300,000). - Signature of a first distribution agreement for the United States with DM Products and Technologies Co., Inc. for the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire ($750,000). - Prod's adoption of ArtQuest's PDF-IT technology for electronic exchange and print document production. Prod's is the French production subsidiary of EURO RSCG, the world's fifth largest advertising network in the world. EURO RSCG is itself part of the Havas-Advertising Group, the fourth largest communications group in the world. - Appointment of Mr. Marcel Dionne as sales manager for Canada (formerly business manager at Oracle and IBM), Mr. Pierre Castien as product manager - CopyBox (formerly vice president, marketing and business development, Canada for Lafarge), and Mr. Marc Gagnon as product manager - JetBox (formerly product manager for Cescom and Lucent Technologies). - Unveiling in June 2001 of a new product destined for the quick print market: the JetBox for HP5000. ArtQuest International Alliances Inc. (BdM: AQ.B) is a high-technology company based in Laval, Quebec. The Company is a leader in the design, development and marketing of innovative computerized solutions in the areas of digital printing and graphic communications. ArtQuest markets its products in 24 countries across the world, including Europe, North America and Australia, through OEM partners like MC Imaging (Mitsubishi), Kodak and Agfa, and recognized distributors such as Imation.