Some stats from the conference call...
Sold during the last quarter:
Mechanical - 68,000 commercial and educational seats.
Revit - 21,000 commercial seats.
Inventor - 11,000 commercial seats.
Civil 3D - 7,200 commercial seats.
For the entire year, net revenues are projected to be $US2.14-2.16 billion, up 16%-17% over last year. CEO Carl Bass noted specifically that SolidWorks grew just 4% last quarter. He also noted that nearly-acquired companies Opticore and Skymatter had "very, very small revenue streams" as standalone companies.
Autodesk complained about some financial analysts offering resellers thousands of dollars for information on how Autodesk's software is selling. "People who send thank you gifts with a bottle of wine is one thing. Once you start to offer thousands of dollars to resellers to talk, you start to really bias the sample in a bad way," said Mr Bass.
He made this complaint, because days before Autodesk revealed its outstanding quarterly results, one financial analyst said he expected worse numbers, after talking with resellers who reported slow sales of software. In a later interview, Autodesk noted that unhappy resellers are more likely to complain.
Carl notes that SolidWorks only grew 4% but he fails to mention that SolidWorks still outsold Inventor for the quarter.
Also, how much revenue does Inventor alone bring in? Can't compare cause Autodesk doesn't post it separate from their other software.
Posted by: Jason | Aug 20, 2007 at 09:55 AM
To skew the financial picture Carl compared sequential quarterly sales (Q1 2007 vs. Q2 2007).
Typically financial comparisons are done using the same fiscal periods (Q2 2007 vs. Q2 2006).
In either case, SolidWorks outsold Inventor by over 1,000 licenses in Q2 2007.
Posted by: John | Aug 20, 2007 at 12:33 PM