SG&A expenses decreased from 24.5% in 2002 to 19% of the turnover for 2003 while R&D expenses were maintained at 4.8% of the turnover.

Earnings before tax, financial expenses, goodwill amortization and exceptional items (EBIT) amount to 40.7 million, i.e. 3.2% of the revenue, to be compared to a loss of 133 million in 2002. Bull here achieves its third profitable semester in a row (+ 18 million in 2nd half 2002, + 20 million in 1st half 2003 and + 20.7 million in 2nd half 2003).

Financial expenses amount to 47.6 million, of which 24.7 million related to interest expenses on the French State loan.

The Group net result is a profit of 4.1 million to be compared with a loss of 548 million in 2002.

The free cash-flow generated by Bull in 2003 amounts to 55.2 million compared with a negative cash-flow of 207 million in 2002.

In 2003, Bull has enhanced the deployment of its strategy, as defined in 2002 and adapted to its new configuration, which has ambitions to deliver open IT solutions including products and services to targeted customers.

In the servers business, Bull's strategy is focused around the design and production of high-end servers for networked infrastructures. In 2003, Bull launched NovaScale, a new generation of modular enterprise servers based on standard components.

This range of systems has already won recognition from scientific, technical and business environments, notably with Dassault-Aviation and Conforama in France, HLRS, the first High Performance Computing centre in Germany and the Oceanography centre in Southampton, UK. More than a hundred servers have been delivered, showing a strong growth in the course of the second semester.

This new range of computers offers a significant evolution path for the future and provides a safe, economic and long term evolution for Bull's mainframe (GCOS) customers.

Bull also consolidated its GCOS customer base in Europe and the US, through the sales of high end DPS 9000 servers launched in 2002, and also strongly increased the sales of its DPS 7000 range of servers (GCOS 7 on Intel).

As to the Unix market, Bull has renewed its Escala range of servers (POWER/AIX) sustaining business activity, and showing a significant growth mainly in the high-end servers during the second semester.

Bull has also seen important successes in the security domain, with its products and solutions dedicated to the security of networks and information systems.

The services activities strengthened their position in some key areas: telecommunications, e-government, defence, ERPs, payment systems, business intelligence and outsourcing. They also increased their position in the deployment of complex infrastructures.

Finally, Bull reinforced its contribution in the innovative area of open source, notably through improvements of JOnAS, an application server, as well as through the development of a new range of customer based support services for open source solutions.

In a market which is still waiting for recovery, Bull forecasts a turnover of around 570 million and an EBIT of 17 million for the first half year 2004.

Within two years, Bull has exceeded the profitability objectives of its turnaround plan, as proposed to the Board of Directors on March 13th, 2002. Backed-up with a new and adapted organisation, a financial restructuring, a strong industrial strategy based on the Company's specific assets, Bull now meets the requirements in terms of viability and competitiveness, for being a profitable company in the long run.