Ashton-Tate Has Annual Report for Computers

For shareholders and investment analysts who want more from an annual report than number-choked pages of raw financial data in agate type, Ashton-Tate, the Culver City-based software company, has an annual report that lights up a computer screen and helps interpret its own numbers. It’s on a computer disk.

In addition to including all the standard figures required in a yearly financial review, the disk version of Ashton-Tate’s 1985 annual report allows analysts with personal computers to quickly convert raw numbers into such important statistics as debt-equity ratio, return on net sales and book value per share.

The disk report also produces instant graphs that show, for example, the comparative sales revenue generated by each of the company’s microcomputer software products or the percentages of revenue generated through domestic distributors, dealers, computer hardware manufacturers or international sales.

“We held brainstorming sessions to determine what questions are most asked by shareholders and analysts--then we set those up so the answers could be pulled out quickly,” Gail Pomerantz, a spokeswoman for the 4-year-old company, said.

For noncomputer users, Ashton-Tate also produced a standard, printed annual report. That version shows, for example, such raw numbers as the total amount of shareholder equity and a separate sum for net sales. But with the disk, a simple command to the computer converts those numbers to a more meaningful ratio of return on shareholder equity. It also displays three-year comparisons of that figure in graph form.

“I think we may have taken the first step in a trend for the future,” Pomerantz said. “I think other companies will find it useful, too. Reaction has been extremely positive.”

The Ashton-Tate annual report disk comes with a demonstration disk of its Framework software, the word processing and spread sheet program that, according to the disk version of the annual report, accounts for 18% of the company’s sales revenue.

“Our main intent was to find a novel way to put an annual report together, but this also gives people an opportunity to see a practical use for a software product,” Pomerantz said.

Norman H. Block, executive vice president of finance and administration and the father of Ashton-Tate’s disk version annual report, said the proliferation of personal computers among business professionals makes the computer disk “a valuable tool” for analysts and investors who follow his company’s financial progress.