Telerate Acquires Compu Trac Companies, Plans New Multi-Window Cash Market Products

Telerate, Inc, says it will acquire Computer Assisted Analysis, Inc. of New Orleans and two subsidiary firms, Compu Trac, Inc. and Delta Digital Design, Inc., for an undisclosed sum of cash. The deal will provide Telerate with much-needed new capabilities in technical analysis and computer graphics.

Compu Trac is probably best known for its "Intra-Day Analyst" real-time charting and technical analysis software for the IBM-PC and Apple II series computers. The Delta Digital Design unit makes a special purpose computer, the Compu Trac D, which Telerate is expected to adapt for its own data networks. Compu Trac principals Tim Slater and Jim Schmit will continue to run the company in New Orleans under long-term employment contracts, Telerate says.

"The principal asset they have is both the market knowledge and the technical knowledge in terms of software for technical analysis," says Rick Snape, vice president, product marketing, at Telerate. As financial futures have become more and more of a factor, he says, Telerate has found it necessary to respond. "Cash traders have to pay attention to what's going on in the futures markets and one of the driving forces in the futures markets is technical analysis."

But Telerate's clear motive in the Compu Trac acquisition is to quickly correct a strategic weakness -- its lack of sophisticated graphics capability. Telerate could have developed the necessary technology in-house, but chose to buy instead in order to save time, say several observers. New competitors like Security Pacific Market Information and Knight-Ridder's Moneycenter have been trumpeting the availability of dynamic graphics packages for their cash market data. "There is a lot more interdependence between markets and it is difficult in a numeric sense to see that relationship," says Snape. "With graphic analysis you can really see those relationships a lot more clearly at a glance, which is what our dealing environment is all about."

How Compu Trac's technology will attach to Telerate's network is not clear. "We have several protocols, several feeds, and it's really a question of mix and match, and I wouldn't go beyond that," says Telerate executive vice president Dick Cowles. Since the Compu Trac D computer supports multiple windows, Cowles says, "it would tend to be multi-page protocols, whereas our existing protocol tends to be a one page per terminal protocol."

A likely starting point might be Telerate's new satellite/FM sideband broadcast data feeds -- "rather a simple solution but one that would be a fair guess," says Snape. The Compu Trac D debuted less than two years ago and is still not in widespread use, but it does have field experience receiving broadcast quote streams from Market Information, Inc. Neither Cowles nor Snape will comment on when Telerate might bring its first Compu Trac-based product to market.