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Agile Software (Nasdaq: AGIL) fell 31 U.S. cents to $10 in morning trading Wednesday after the company said results for the fourth quarter ending April 30th are likely to be hurt by a soft economy, as well as a charge related to the termination of a plan to be acquired by software maker Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA).
Agile, a San Jose, California-based maker of business-to-business (B2B) software, said it expects a loss before amortization and other charges of 3 to 6 cents per share on revenue of $26 million to $27 million.
In the previous quarter, the company earned 1 cent per share on revenue of $25 million. In the year-earlier quarter, the company lost 2 cents on revenue of $10.8 million.
Results for the current quarter will include a charge of about $5 million for the
termination of the Ariba deal 
, in addition to "significant one-time charges"
for investments and the possible writedown of goodwill related to its 1999
acquisition of Digital Market.
Ariba and Agile canceled their planned stock-swap merger on Tuesday. The deal was originally valued at $2.55 billion.
Agile chief executive officer Bryan D. Stolle said that Agile is "continuing to close larger, seven-figure deals" with companies like Benchmark Electronics, Ciena, Hitachi, SCI and Solectron.
However, those deals are not making Agile overly optimistic, according to Stolle.
"We are mindful that in the last few months economic conditions have declined very rapidly and that many IT companies were not able to close expected business in the last month of their quarter," Stolle said. "There can be no assurance that the same thing won't happen to Agile."
For the time being, Stolle said, the company sees no need for staff cuts, though "business prudence dictates that we watch spending and slow hiring until we get a clearer picture of where the bottom is for this economic slowdown."
Agile also adopted a shareholder rights plan designed to prevent a hostile
takeover of the company.
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