NEW YORK, Bowne & Co., Inc. (NYSE:BNE) today announced operating results for the period ended September 30, 2000. Net sales for the quarter reached $266,080,000 compared to $240,350,000 for the quarter ended September 30, 1999, an 11% increase. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for the third quarter increased 2% to $26,960,000 from $26,370,000 in the third quarter of 1999. Net income of $5,519,000 decreased slightly from $5,644,000 for the quarter ended September 30, 1999. Diluted earnings per share were $0.16 compared to $0.15 in the quarter ended September 30, 1999. For the nine months ended September 30, 2000, net sales were $852,760,000, an increase of 17% over $731,506,000 for 1999, while EBITDA increased 8% to $90,670,000 from $83,690,000 in 1999. Net income for the nine months ended September 30, 2000 was $22,509,000 compared to $20,550,000 in the comparable 1999 period, resulting in diluted earnings per share of $0.63 compared to $0.55 in 1999. Robert M. Johnson, chairman and chief executive officer of Bowne stated, "While we are satisfied with our overall results in what proved to be a difficult market for financial print, we are extremely pleased with the results of both our Outsourcing and Globalization segments. The record revenues in our Outsourcing segment represent the sixth consecutive quarter of growth. In our Globalization segment, record quarterly revenues produced positive EBITDA results. As we stated last quarter, our financial print operations were impacted by the slowdown in domestic capital market activity that commenced in the middle of the second quarter and continues to date. While our financial print revenues increased 8% from the comparable 1999 period, the impact of the slowdown was felt in the volume of M&A and IPO work. We did participate in several significant deals, such as the Berkshire Hathaway acquisition of Shaw Industries, the Citigroup acquisition of Associates and the Lucent and Nextel spin-offs and we maintained our leading market share and continue to experience strong growth in our international financial print business. However we anticipate that the domestic market slowdown will continue and negatively impact fourth quarter results." Mr. Johnson said, "The results of our financial printing business are satisfying especially when you recognize the difficulty of balancing our resources with the uneven spacing of customer demands. As you will recall, our second quarter results were negatively impacted by the domestic capital market slowdown in mid-May. We saw conflicting trends in the quarter of market softness and a building pipeline of new filings. August proved to be a busy period, with Labor Day appearing to be the launching point for a strong finish. However this did not materialize as volumes were down in September and continue to be down into the fourth quarter." Mr. Johnson continued, "Our financial printing revenues have been consistently growing over the last four years at a rate of 20% per year. In order to meet the growth this business, as well as our other businesses, a substantial investment in infrastructure was required. Our goal continues to be to leverage our new network investments so that we may continue this growth without adding new production or support staff. Selling and administrative expense, as a percentage of sales, decreased for the third consecutive quarter, demonstrating our attention to costs. We will continue to focus on reducing costs in order to improve financial returns, however we will not do so at the risk of compromising the service that customers have come to expect from Bowne." Commenting on international financial printing activity, Carl J. Crosetto, executive vice president stated: "The continuing strength in our international financial print business and in the international capital markets is evidenced by our participation in the acquisitions of both Voice Stream Wireless Corporation and Powertel Inc. by Deutsche Telekom of Germany, the acquisitions of Paine Webber by the Union Bank of Switzerland, Seagrams by Vivendi of France and the merger of Terra Networks of Spain with Lycos. These transactions are indicative of the continuing cross border M&A work that is driving the growth of our international business. We continue to serve the growing debt and equity markets in Europe having printed the IPOs for New Skies Satellite and Head N.V. as well as the bond issues for the Republic of Italy and Teva Pharmaceutical of Israel." "I am extremely pleased with Bowne Global Solutions' (BGS) record quarter as new sales orders continue their strong trend, Mr. Johnson commented. "Within BGS, the localization business (LBU) provides traditional product localization services to software and hardware companies, worked on several large projects for Microsoft, and other projects with IFS, Palm, Novell and Oracle. BGS' content business (CBU), a leader in the global content creation and management industry for web-based solutions, received new sales orders including significant projects from MSN Search and DigitalThink. We expect that the strategic alliances developed with Semantix and Ask Jeeves during the quarter should begin to yield meaningful incremental revenue in the near future. In addition, the relationship with Netripples.com that was announced earlier this year has begun to bear fruit with both internal development projects and joint customer solutions." Mr. Crosetto added, "The record results of Bowne Business Solutions, our outsourcing unit, are a reflection of the commitment and dedication to client service by our employees. Our continuing efforts to provide higher value outsourcing solutions to our clients certainly are a key to our success. We anticipate that in the coming weeks we will be announcing the signing of a significant deal which will be global in scope -- the first of its kind." Mr. Johnson concluded, "Our Internet consulting group, Immersant, showed revenue increases of 43% and 39% when compared to the comparable 1999 quarter and year-to-date periods. However, sequential quarter-to-quarter revenue declined, reflecting our current practice not to seek additional dot com work or to recognize dot com revenue, unless the dot com company has the funds available to pay for Immersant's services. The average deal size is anticipated to increase with major new client wins in the third quarter including T. Rowe Price, Paine Webber and Hartford Life. We are evaluating our resource deployment and overhead structure in light of the change in market conditions. Last quarter, we stated that as a result of Immersant working with Bowne Global Solutions' Content Business Unit, we added new customers looking for global web consulting and development services. We have signed a number of new contracts for these services and are receiving very positive feedback from our clients where both of these units are participating." Bowne will continue to focus on managing receivables as days outstanding decreased to 82 days in September 2000 from 90 days in September 1999. While our total debt at September 30, 2000 of $105,270,000 has increased from December 31, 1999, as compared to September 30, 1999, debt decreased $14,672,000. Excluding $40 million in debt due to the stock repurchase program, our debt position, excluding the stock repurchase activity, actually declined approximately $55 million. Financial printing work-in-process inventories of $27,688,000 at September 30, 2000 compares to $26,027,000 in 1999.