Revenue for the quarter reached $195.5 million, an increase of 6.8 percent from $183.1 million in last year's corresponding period. The discussion during this week's earnings webcast was long on strategic accomplishments, but short on specifics. CEO Mike Gianoni talked about putting together a world-class sales team but gave no figures on the number of sales reps or how much hiring occurred. He noted the nonprofit software company has built a customer care organization "to shift account management off sales people to allow them to concentrate 100 percent of the time on closing quota", but gave no details on the size of the new organization. Blackbaud experienced a one percentage point improvement in gross margin, which went to 55.5 percent from 54.5 percent while expenses dropped to 46.3 percent of revenue from 47.1 percent. Operating income rose to $90.5 million, an increase of 5 percent over the $86.2 million in last year's corresponding period. The bottom line got a $468,000 upward kick in other income, compared to a $15,000 negative in that category a year earlier. We'll get the detail on that in the 10-Q. While that category usually reflects currency adjustments, most companies reporting in the last two months have shown currency losses.
The story was one of good, old-fashioned revenue growing faster than expenses for