The Shareholders' Meeting has approved the 2001 balance and has distributed a dividend with an increase of 80%

Shareholders rewarded with a dividend in continuous growth

The group closed 2001 with a production value of 60.9 million Euro, an increase of 25,7% compared to 2000.

The consolidated net profit, equal to 9.1 million Euro, an increase of 18,9%.

The CAD IT S.p.A’s shareholders meeting, leader in the Italian financial software market, has today approved, at its first summoning, the balance project for the year 2001. By examining the consolidated balance, the shareholders were able to appreciate the considerable increase in growth of the production value and the high income of the Veronese group. Based on these results, the shareholders meeting decided on a distribuition of a dividend of 0.65 Euro per share, an increase of 80.6% compared to 2000, despite the setting aside of 4.5 million Euro as a reserve.

The consolidated balance at the 31st December 2001 highlights:

• A production value equal to 60.9 million Euro, an increase of 25,7% compared to 2000;
• A gross operational margin equal to 18 million Euro, which corresponds to 29,5% of the production value;
• A net consolidated profit equal to 9.1 million Euro, an increase of 18,9% compared to 2000.

The net profit achieved by the head company CAD IT S.p.A. amounted to about 10,3 million Euro.

The brilliant results achieved in 2001 confirm the strengthening of CAD IT’s competitive position in the Italian software market, despite the difficult economic situation. The high income, which was achieved in spite of the Group’s considerable increase of personnel and investments into research and development (which as usual is completely covered in the cost of the financial year), is, however, very significant.

In fact, during the activity of 2001, CAD IT activated a high increase in productive capacity by introducing 164 new staff bringing the total number of people working within the Group to 600. Moreover, new stakes in three companies (Datafox, DQS and Smart-Line) were purchased and new products launched (including the Private Banking and the ERP SIGMAWEB software) aimed at both banking and industrial clients. In 2001 many resources were dedicated to the development of SIBAC, an innovative and complete information technology system for financial institutions, which already achieved a sale in the first semester of 2002.

The net consolidated financial position on 31 December 2001 was equal to 41 million euro. This figure highlights a decrease of 13 million euro compared to the value recorded at the end of the previous financial year, which is attributed to purchases in 2001 of stakes to the total value of 10.3 million euro (of which 9.2 million euro have already been paid) and to investments in instrumental assets involving an expenditure of 6.9 million euro.

The ex-dividend date and the dividend payment date set by the Shareholder’s Meeting are the 13^th May and the 16^th May 2002.

The President of CAD IT SpA, Giuseppe Dal Cortivo, delclared: “We have closed 2001 with excellent results, which allow us to reward our shareholders with a dividend in continuous growth. Also for the present year we aim to continue .increasing the revenues and maintaining a high profitability. With this in mind, the positive signs received from our activity allow us to be optimistic”.