Springtime brings with it a mix of warm days and chilling reminders of the cold winter that passed before. The flurry of results from South African IT companies recently has produced some green shoots, but also a few biting cold fronts.

Among the green shoots are Comparex and FrontRange, which both recorded pleasing results for their last financial year. Comparex (see page 18) seems to be managing its transition to a services company, though it still has issues around its R2.2 billion cash pile and finding a black empowerment partner.

FrontRange is an interesting case. Long a whipping boy of the local IT scene – a legacy of excesses during its previous incarnation as Ixchange – it recorded a R140 million loss in the year to June 2002. In the period to June this year, however, it managed to turn a small profit of R360 000.