Gibson - I think that we paid a fair price. Halliburton has estimated that the deal will be neutral to accretive* in our 2001 financials. With moderate synergy, we should make money out of this acquisition in year one.
PDM - How do you see the relationship with PGS developing?
Gibson - We will be working closely with PGS. Landmark will become a data management service provider to PGS and we look forward to a strong working relationship. This is a win win deal at many levels, on price, in our ongoing contractual relationship with PGS and for our customers.
PDM - PetroBank brings Landmark back into mainstream data management - something of a change from your previous position.
Gibson - Before this deal we had leading edge software in practically every domain except for the Corporate Data Store. This acquisition plugs the gap and puts Landmark in a very strong strategic position.
PDM - But only a year ago, Landmark was advocating letting the data vendors manage the data.
Gibson - We are just reacting to the way the marketplace has evolved.
PDM - How are you planning to evolve PetroBank? Will it grow to handle other seismic formats such as compressed or partially stacked data?
Gibson - We will be integrating PetroBank with OpenWorks, but there will be other data management tools. We are aiming at a seamless flow from Archive to Projects assuring storage and subsequent retrieval. Halliburton is now a real time knowledge company, the 7x24 data repository is part of this.
PDM - Is Surf and Connect part of the deal?
Gibson - Surf and Connect is a significant part of the deal. We have also acquired Tigress.
PDM - Wow! What are you going to do with Tigress?
Gibson - We will evaluate the technology, and plan to replace some of it with our existing products and to transition some clients. We also plan to extract and leverage other Tigress components - especially in the engineering data field where Tigress is strong.
PDM - Where does all this leave Open Explorer?
Gibson - This needs to be resolved - we have some decisions to make and several options - a technology merge or perhaps different development paths. We will be in good shape to evaluate this after the deal closes in February.
PDM - It has always proved hard to productize data management software and PetroBank has a large service component. Did you break-out the service/software components in your evaluation?
Gibson - We did not break the cost down in that way. We saw the whole of PGS’ data management business as an attractive alternative to the other industry data repositories.
PDM - Despite PetroBank’s success at the national data repository, it has failed to penetrate the oil company market. How do you plan to fix this?
Gibson - There will be serious marketing focus on PetroBank in 2001 after closure of this deal in March.
* PDM understands that this means that the deal will not affect earnings in the year of acquisition.
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