WorldCAD Access

CAD Share Prices Falling

Opinion Publicly-traded CAD vendors, and ones that dabble in CAD, are not escaping today's stock market rout. Change in share price at this moment from a week ago: Trimble down 11%. PTC down by 8%. Autodesk down by 8%. Hexagon down by 7%. Dassault Systemes down by 6%. Nemetschek down by 4%. Siemens down by 3%. Read more →

The Fallout from Autodesk’s Financial Misadventure

Opinion The problem with subscriptions is that they generate a lot of money that companies cannot immediately report as income. Think of it: you pay Autodesk $2,000 to use AutoCAD for one year. Autodesk earns $2,000, but then can report only one-quarter of it ($500) in its next quarterly report. The other $1,500 sit in a bank account and cannot be used. Then, in the next quarter, it can report another $500 and start spending it. And so on. What if there were clever ways to report more of it sooner? Autodesk “incentivized customers” to Accept multi-year upfront billing, typically... Read more →

PTC Lifts the Curtain on Its Plus Replacement for Atlas

The cloud goes + It wasn't so long ago that the future of PTC was Atlas, the cloud system based on Onshape technology. This made sense, as Onshape itself was based on a multi-user multi-database system. The mythical Greek character held the entire world on his shoulders, and so Atlas would do the same for all PTC software -- in five to ten years. Programs like the Creo mechanical CAD software would strictly become SaaS (Software as a Service, the fancy term for subscription paid and running off remote servers, aka cloud). But then PTC went all quiet on Atlas;... Read more →

Dassault Explains Solidworks’ Q2 Drop in Sales

Not all China's fault Sales of Solidworks fell in Q2 of 2022, which is an unusual event for Dassault Systemes. Here to explain it is an executive from Dassault, who spoke during the company’s quarterly conference call with financial analysts. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity. - - - Q: Was the Q2 drop in new Solidworks CAD licenses due mostly due to China? A: Yes, you're right. But something [else] happened this year, as you may know we increased prices. It was aligned in some countries with the level of inflation. Many of our resellers anticipated... Read more →

PTC Feels Good Leaving China

PTC ceo James Heppelmann explains how his company came to have a lowered profile in China. He was responding to a question during PTC's quarterly conference call with financial analysts. I’ve edited the text slightly for clarity. The original transcript can be read at Seeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4526704-ptc-inc-ptc-ceo-jim-heppelmann-on-q3-2022-results-earnings-call-transcript. - - - James Heppelmann: I think the key thing in China to know, if you don’t know this now, is it’s now 5% of our business. So we have very little exposure. It had previously been as high as 7% or 8%. But when President Trump was in the office, he went... Read more →

The SaaS-ification of PTC's Software

Moving from dark green to light green Saket Kalia (financial analyst): I'd love to zoom in on slide 20 a bit [see figure below], very useful slide. Understanding that diagram is a vision and not guidance per se, I'd love to hear how you envision PTC's move to SaaS [software as a service]. Chart showing some aspects of some programs starting to run on Atlas; the lighter the shade of green, the more of the software is on the cloud It looks like you'll have all your products available in a SaaS form -- well, the major products available in... Read more →

PTC to start charging for free Onshape ent-edu version

There's profits to be made from them there million(s) CAD vendors often give free licenses to educational institutions in an attempt to hook young people on the software early. I've never felt that this is a valid tactic, for when young people enter the workforce, they use the CAD program the boss tells them to use. Still, boasting about the number of educational users is a pretty good way to goose user numbers. Solidworks, for instance, could at one time be heard boasting of six million users, but five million of those were educational. (Today, the company says it has... Read more →

The wave predicted by no one

They're occupying Wall Street all over again When I first became self-employed, I read widely to understand what I was doing. The most reassuring book I read was Alvin Tofler's PowerShift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century. Mr Tofler (d. 2016) was a futurist, who with his wife wrote thick books on what the future could bring, his best known title being FutureShock. In PowerShift, he told me that what I was doing -- a newly self-employed one-man technical writer, editor, typesetter, publisher -- was the right thing to be doing, because I represented the... Read more →

Best tweets on today's $GME stock pump

Oh noes! Amateur traders on sites like RobinHood and Reddit are driving up the value of GameStop, best known as a retail computer game seller. As I write this, $GME is up nearly 10x in one week. And as TechCrunch headlined it, "Gamestop, memestocks, and the revenge of the retail trader." The downside: normally-legit fund firms are loosing billions on shorts and are needing support from other firms to avoid collapsing. Here are some of the best tweets on the topic: "oh no the wrong people are manipulating the stock market" - Brandy Jensen (@brandyljensen) "People looking for an explainer... Read more →

ZwSoft Cuts Prices and Raises Prices

Targeting Autodesk ZwSoft is offering free upgrades to network licenses. In doing this, it is aiming directly at Autodesk's discontinuance of our industry's normal approach to network licensing. (Autodesk now only sells a license per person.) The Chinese software company has software for DWG editing, machine design, some verticals, and for portable devices. It offers permanent licenses, maintenance subscriptions, and rent-to-own licenses. How Network Licenses Work Network licenses allow anyone at a firm to run as much CAD software as they need. Some might need CAD for just a few minutes a day, others use it all day. With network... Read more →

Heppelmann and Hirschtick on PTC's Acquisition of Onshape

From yesterday's meeting with financial analysts (The Onshape acquisition closes in November, following normal regulatory approval and certain closing conditions.) Jim Heppelmann (CEO, PTC): PTC and Onshape share a common vision around helping organizations transform the way they develop products. Onshapes peer multi-tenant SaaS [software as a service] platform is a perfect complement to our market leading on-premise product development solutions and coupled with our industrial IoT [internet of things] and AR [augmented reality] solutions, we can address an even broader part of the waterfront of digital transformation that’s sweeping across the industrial market. Now if you step back and... Read more →

Archive: 'State of the PLM Economy' webinar

Growth, growth, growth Taking in CIMdata PLMNews' Webinar "The State of the PLM Economy" this morning with Stan Przybylinski. Stan reminding us that PLM is different for different industries. Companies that make automobiles don't care about the problems toothpaste makers face. Hexagon AB is of greater interest now that they no longer only make measuring devices. They have a strong position on the shop floor, says Mr Przybylinski. Siemens PLM working on "generative engineering": generative design that will eventually be applied to more than just single parts, but to entire sub-systems in mechanical and electronic designs. In part, this is... Read more →

Archive: What PTC told financial analysts about Q4

Discovery Live delayed Each quarter, executives from shareholder-owned companies have to face financial analysts in public, and talk about the last three months and a little bit of what to expect for the future. Here is what PTC execs told them. One significant item was that ANSYS Discovery Live is delayed being integrated into Creo to customers by half a year, - - - PTC reports fiscal year 2018 revenues of $1,252 million. While IoT [Internet of things] didn't quite surpass PLM [product lifecyle management] in the full fiscal 2018, it was close and we expect IoT to handily surpass... Read more →

Autodesk hopes to have complete BIM in 5 years

Five-year plan Autodesk ceo Andrew Anagnost describes where he hopes the company will arrive in five years, BIM-wise. - - - Our cloud products have become an integral selling point for our EBA [enterprise] customers and usage within our EBA customer base has really taken off. For example, in Q1 [Feb-Apr, 2018], just over half of the monthly active users for BIM 360 were in EBA accounts. This really validates our relevancy at the top of the general contractor market, which is where we focused initially. From High-end to Mid-market That success is a strong foundation to build on and... Read more →

PTC loves Industry 4.0; the Dassault CEO disses it

Clash of the CEOs One week the ceo of PTC reaffirms his love for Industry 4.0, and the next week competitor Dassault Systemes sloughs it off as yesteryear's technology. (Industry 4.0 goes beyond concepts like the industrial Internet and the digital factory. Industry 4.0 completely digitizes physical assets and integrates them into digital ecosystems that include partners all along the value chain, from suppliers to customers -- from PwC Canada.) Here is what the two chief executive officers had to say to financial analysts last month: Jim Heppelmann (ceo PTC): "I'll start with smart connected operations, what we call SCO,... Read more →

Why Dassault figures Solidworks will become a billion-dollar brand

Double-digit growth For a CAD package as firmly set on the desktop as Solidworks, its sales are growing remarkably. Not only is it stuck on the desktop but doubly-stuck in Windows. Yet sales in 2018 are "double-digit," as marketing people and financial analysts would tout. In the last quarter (January-March, 2018), sales of Solidworks licenses grew 13% over a year earlier. This wasn't supposed to happen. This is, after all, the age of Onshape (the self-declared Solidworks killer) and Fusion along with the rest of Autodesk's "infinite" cloud marketing. Heck, Onshape and Autodesk were so sure that the cloud (and... Read more →

PTC loves IoT (but not CAD) on the cloud

IoT yes, CAD, not so much Dassault Systemes and Autodesk continue to be the only Big 5 CAD vendors to wholesale their software from the multiple servers located who-knows-where (ie, the cloud). Siemens PLM, PTC, and Bentley Systems have little interest, as moving desktop software to servers has been proven to be a long, arduous, painful, and then largely unsuccessful haul. In his conference call with financial analysts, PTC ceo Jim Heppelmann confirmed his company's lack of urgency of jumping on that particular bandwagon. ------------ Ken Talanian of Evercore ISI: I was wondering if you could talk about the initial... Read more →

PTC ceo speaks quite frankly about a new customer

A win with BMW When a CAD vendor sells some software to a significant customer, the accompanying press release can make it sound like the software just replaced all competitors at the significant customer. For example, when Dassault Systemes announced that Boeing was going Dassault-only, the CAD company admitted later it would take five years just to implement the software, and we all know how implementation schedules run. In fact, the big deal in all these press releases is the name of the customer, not the software order itself. So it's refreshing when a CAD ceo admits that a landmark... Read more →

Dassault on why Solidworks sells so much better

12% Up Solidworks sales are roaring, leaving all competitors in its dust. During last week's conference call with financial analysts, Dassault Systemes explained why. - - - Jay Vleeschhouwer from Griffin Securities: Let me start by asking about the continued momentum you've had with Solidworks . It had a very good 2016, particularly in terms of new license momentum, and that's continued now through the first three quarters of this year. And at least by our calculation you've been able to sustain an annual run rate of new licenses at well over 60,000 new licenses, well above the rest of... Read more →

Dassault's cfo gets to boast about Boeing win

Thibault de Tersant, cheif financial officer, Dassault Systemes So I cannot resist the temptation to speak a little bit about Boeing, because in fact I have been associated with this story for the last 30 years as an inter-office point for Boeing for commercial and legal topics, and it's a customer I respect very much. [Our deal with Boeing is for 30 years, with a four-year ramp-up, and is] a very significant transaction in the scope of it because it includes not only commercial aircraft but also Boeing Space and Defense divisions. So that's quite significant. They are still using... Read more →

PTC's ceo explains what went wrong in Japan

James E. Heppelmann [Year-to-date Japan bookings are down $20 million versus last year.] If you go back more than seven years, PTC was struggling on and off with Japan. The main problem we had is that we always relied on an expat, partly because we never had a local Japanese leader with good enough English skills whom we trusted, who trusted us, who could communicate effectively with us. So the easy answer was send an expat over there. Now Japanese culture and Japanese business culture is very different than anywhere else in the world, and Japanese companies and executives only... Read more →

American CEOs come to terms with Republican president-elect

Trump the Love Following the results of the recent US federal election, the mainstream media was filled with outrage from the elite whose candidate failed to earn sufficient electoral votes. PacketSled ceo Matt Harrigan, for example, threatened to assassinate the president-elect. On Facebook, and on multiple times. Following his outburst of freedom of expression, he resigned from his job and his company reported him to the Secret Service, whose job is to investigate threats against presidents and presidential candidates. PocketSled's software -- which does continuous monitoring, threat detection, and network forensics -- apparently did not detect the threat of the... Read more →

No Pay, No Play

Enforcing subscriptions A reader asks, I am quite curious how this subscription change shakes out for Autodesk. I find that everyone is considering alternatives now, which is new. - G.R. I think that all of Autodesk's customers who want to be on subscriptions have already signed up. They have had several years to get on board. That's about a couple of million, less than half of the total number of customers who use Autodesk's mainline software. As of January 31, Autodesk stopped selling software with permanent licenses. Two exceptions: LT lost the permanent license option last year (it was used... Read more →

What Carl Bass Said About Activist Investors

The ghost of "Chainsaw" Al comes a'knocking Activist investors want to maximize the profit of public companies, ie, ones that sell shares to the public. Once investors have at least 5% of the company's shares, they can get a seat on the board of directors. Once on the board of directors, they can influence the direction of the company with the sole aim of increasing the value of shares. For example, Autodesk's M&E (media & entertainment) division has been for many years doing poorly, with sales falling year after year. Autodesk keeps it around for all the Oscars the software... Read more →

Who Could Buy Onshape?

$180 million minimum bid Onshape runs on funds from investors, who have put $144 million into the private company. While its' pretty exciting to play with that much money, there is the dark side. The investors want their money back -- with growth, and not too far in the future. Assuming a 25% premium, the company's price tag is $180 million. At least. Who could pony up that much cash? Well, the appropriate suitor needs to meet two qualifications: Have access to sufficient cash or equivalents, such as shares and loans Have a need for the software or its equivalent,... Read more →

For Autodesk, AutoCAD LT shines again

Forgotten step-brother today leading the way For many years, AutoCAD LT was the Embarrassment of Autodesk. Not because it was the cheapest, most underpowered desktop CAD program offered by the company. But because LT was its best selling software, outselling AutoCAD, the supposed-to-be "market leader," 3 to 1 -- and so this was something Autodesk became loathe to publicize. Not that Autodesk didn't try to discourage sales. It upped the price from $499 to $1,200 -- and 2x even higher in unlucky countries like New Zealand. It imposed severe limitations on feature sets and programming. (AutoLISP does work with LT.... Read more →

Dassault's exploding number of software offerings

Clarity through Diversity During last week's conference call with financial analysts, Dassault Systemes' ceo introduced new software with spellings nearly as dreadful as upFront.eZine: 3DEXPERIENCity for virtual cities 3DVIA HomeByMe for virtual furniture NETVIBES Dashboard Intelligence for virtual things Their marketing people writing copy are going to be getting writer's cramp from hitting the Shift and CapsLock buttons so often in so short a time. Switching from what concerns editors to the concerns of financial types, let's hear how the company defends all the software titles is has... Jay Vleeschhouwer (Griffin Securities): I'd like to ask you to elaborate on... Read more →

Here's why 3D Systems sales fell so badly last quarter

DDD It was not a happy day for 3D Systems when they faced financial analysts early, to pre-announce that Q1 revenues were down, way down. Wall Street had expected a profit of $0.17/share, but the company instead expects a loss of $0.13 - $0.15. Projected revenues are falling from a projected $182.2 million to an expected $158 - $160. CEO Avi Reichental explains: We were surprised and disappointed by the abrupt interruption in customer demand late in the quarter from several economic factors that we believe caused many of our industrial customers to defer their planned investments. He explained the... Read more →

What Trimble Thinks About CAD Software

Quite a bit less than we'd guess For us, CAD software is our lives; for Trimble, not so much. The current priorities of the management of any public company are made public for an hour every three months during their conference calls with financial analysts. During this time, they trot out happy numbers and exciting plans designed to keep the share price up. (Sometimes management just grasps at anything. I recall a conference call from American Eagle, the clothing store, where management promised higher sales through... a new line of printed Ts [t-shirts]. Printed Ts aren't selling so well anymore.)... Read more →

The end of democracy: Autodesk thinking of eliminating perpetual licenses, too

Paying duty becomes a duty With upgrades due to be eliminated early next year, next up on Autodesk's chopping block is the perpetual license. Here is the exchange from a recent conference call with financial analysts (reproduced with permission of Seeking Alpha): Matt Hedberg (RBC Capital Markets): Carl, I'm wondering, when might you eliminate perpetual sales? And maybe more generically, what is the framework for eventually pulling this license option? Carl Bass (Autodesk): I'll ask you Matt, what do you think is a good timeframe to do that? Matt Hedberg: I would certainly probably depend on the products, but the... Read more →

Autodesk describes its business model transition

During this week's quarterly conference call with financial analysts, Autodesk ceo Carl Bass described how the company plans to change ("business model transition") the way in which it wants its customers to pay "recurring" revenue. So now let me talk about our business model transition. The start of our business model transition is a milestone event that will take Autodesk to a more recurring, subscription-oriented business over the next four years. In many respects, we started the transition 10 years ago with the introduction of maintenance subscription, which has grown to become about 45% of our revenue mix. [Autodesk currently... Read more →

Autodesk expects you to moan'n groan when it eliminates software upgrades next year

Keith Weiss (Morgan Stanley): I was wondering if you could give us some of the initial feedback that you've gotten from your customers and from the channel to the elimination of upgrade pricing at the end of this fiscal year. Carl Bass (Autodesk): Yes, so as you would imagine, our [dealer] channel is enthusiastic about it. They think it's a big spur to their business in the coming year. And I think it not only drives business, but it reignites conversations that channel partners already should have been having with customers. In some ways, it's been very quiet on the... Read more →

Carl Bass hints at Autodesk's opportunity in 3D printing for 2014

John Byun (UBS Investment Bank): How are you addressing the opportunity in 3D printing? Carl Bass (Autodesk): The best thing about 3D printing is you can only print something that you have a 3D model of. And that's sometimes lost on people. Most of the 3D printing business these days is around a business that's built around the consumables, and it certainly is a good business. I don't know if you guys have looked at that business closely, but people are selling consumables for 100x or 200x the price of the commodity material. I don't know about you but I... Read more →

Autodesk plans to change which software is available under which pricing mechanism

Unknown Analyst: Why would you just not lower the price of the rental even more aggressively like Adobe did? They started about $120 a month. They brought it down to $30, $35. So that way, you would get less churn but more of a solid uptick as you build this business up to a large business. Unknown Executive: Right now, we think we're in the right place, given what we know, what we want in terms of the separation between the perpetual price and the rental price. That could change over time but we feel like we're in the right... Read more →

Why I can never become an accountant

Here is the transcript from a conference call held earlier this year with financial analysts. I won't report which CAD vendor said this, but this is the kind of talk that prevents me from becoming an accountant: So, the $50 million just to be clear, are a series of very specific enterprise customers, very specific ones that we're going to get on a consumption-based model, basically. And these deals, again this is $50 million. Think about it this way. Think about them being in the forecast, this $50 million, where there's a big chunk that would have been revenue up... Read more →

PTC ceo gives an update on the Pro/E -> Creo transition

Matthew L. Williams (Evercore Partners): I just wanted to dig in a little bit on the CAD business, obviously pretty strong for this quarter. Just wondering if you could provide an update on the Creo 2.0 upgrade cycle, and where we stand there? And then sort of alongside that, just an update around sort of direct modeling and the modules, and that opportunity going forward? James Heppelmann (PTC): On Creo 2.0o upgrade cycle, I think we're right on track for that. The last numbers I saw we're right around 40% of the base. A notable customer who moved in last... Read more →

PTC ceo talks about the demand for subscriptions vs perpetual licenses

Raimo Lenschow (Barclays Capital): There's a bigger big debate in the industry in terms of changing the business model towards more consumption (or subscription). Can you highlight what you're thinking around that -- if it really makes sense for the industry? James Heppelmann (PTC): I think we need to separate a little bit what are the vendors saying from what are the customers are saying, because there is a bit of a disconnect there. Let's just look at PTC for a minute: If you take our entire business, half of it is subscription (consumption) -based, that's our maintenance business. So... Read more →

How expensive will Solidworks get? And what about that cloud version?

Reporting on its Q3 financials, Dassault Systemes said that number of SolidWorks licenses sold fell by 6%, yet the revenues from the division rose by 6%. A financial analysts wondered how high the price will get -- and what the cloud plans are for SolidWorks. Gerardus Vos (Barclays Capital): On the pricing of SolidWorks, it seems to be very strong in the third quarter. The pricing for your products are already at the higher end, if you compare it to the competition. What gives you the ability to continue to push this up, and do you think these kind of... Read more →

Autodesk's filing of 8-K confirms $15-$20 million in cuts, mostly in layoffs

Form 8-K for AUTODESK INC 30-Sep-2013 Costs Associated with Exit or Disposal Activities Item 2.05 Costs Associated with Exit or Disposal Activities. On September 24, 2013, Autodesk, Inc. (the "Company") approved a restructuring plan that includes staff reductions and the consolidation of certain leased facilities. The Company expects to substantially complete these efforts by the end of its first quarter of fiscal 2015 (ending April 30, 2014). The Company anticipates incurring pre-tax restructuring charges of $15 million to $20 million, all of which would result in cash expenditures and of which $12 million to $16 million would be for one-time... Read more →

Seeking Alpha: Autodesk discloses restructuring plan

Quoting Seeking Alpha (source: http://seekingalpha.com/currents/post/1306522): The restructuring involves both job cuts and "the consolidation of certain leased facilities." Autodesk isn't disclosing how many jobs will be affected, but does say it expects to record pre-tax charges of $15M-$20M, all of which will result in cash expenditures. There's a good chance some of the job cuts are related to the company's Platform Solutions & Emerging Business and Media & Entertainment units (sales -9% and -11% Y/Y in FQ2, respectively). Read more →

Autodesk's plans = lower revenues

Randall Newton today describes in GraphicSpeak that Autodesk's Q2 revenues are down 1% from a year ago. (The result is in contrast with its largest competitors, whose revenues keep going up.) This, despite all the initiatives the company launched over the last several years that were meant to smooth out revenue fluctuations and at the same time grow them too. Before the recession hit in late 2008, the company planned to grow at 15% a year; shrinking was not in the plans. Ceo Carl Bass said this during yesterday's conference call. On the one hand... Our cloud offerings are unmatched... Read more →

With CAD sales declining, is PTC still a CAD company?

PTC has spread itself out to sell all kinds of software that isn't strictly CAD. Financial analysts wonder why sales of CAD have declined for 1.5 years now. These analysts asked some hard questions of PTC's executives: - - - Yun Kim (Janney Montgomery Scott): You talked a little bit about the CAD business, but can you just go into a little more detail about the continued weakness you're seeing in that business? It's been down year-over-year for the past six quarters in a row. It seems to have decelerated again in this past quarter. Obviously, CAD business does have... Read more →

Uh, oh: PTC lowering its FY13 revenue expectations, blames recession

PTC figures that the rough economy isn't going to pick up as they expected, and so they are lowering their revenue expectations for this year to $1.305 - $1.315 billion -- down 3.3% from the earlier projection of $1.34 - $1.37 billion. The company expects to lose $10 million alone due to poorer currency exchange rates. The latest manufacturing industry reports indicate that European and Japanese manufacturing is in a difficult recession, and the U.S. manufacturing recovery has stumbled as well, recently. ... 85% of our revenue is coming from customers that are in recession. And the earnings results of... Read more →

France's skyhigh taxes place "all the digital sector in danger" -- Bernard Charles

The Financial Times is reporting today that Bernard Charles and other executives of France-based Dassault Systemes are thinking of emigrating from France -- or have already done so. The new socialist government ruling France made good on its election promise to tax top income earners at 75%, as well as to sharply boost taxes to as high as 80% in other areas, such as capital, stock options, and awarded shares. The French government has made some cuts in its spending, but not enough to reduce the debt that keeps increasing due to its over-generous social programs. In an interview with... Read more →

CAD exec expresses frustration with shenanigans of US politicians

During last week's conference call with financial analysts, Autodesk ceo Carl Bass expressed his opinion on the budget deadlock in Washington DC: "The optimism I hear from our customers is just tempered somewhat by the stupidity I see by our politicians." Analysts took him up on his comments: Kash Rangan (BofA Merrill Lynch): "Carl, your comments about the politicians was very vague and ambiguous. I just wanted to clarify-- I'm just kidding, that's not my real question." Mr Bass: "I have two teenage sons, and I expect them to act like knuckleheads. I don't expect members of Congress to act... Read more →

In upFront.eZine this week: analysts quiz PTC over Creo sales

In upFront.eZine issue #764 we have for your reading pleasure... 1. PTC Q1 2013 Results - Q&A 2. Out of the Inbox, and our other regular columns. You can read all about the business of CAD at www.upfrontezine.com/2013/upf-764.htm Read more →

CAD vendors will be tempted into biasing their cloud pricing

The price you pay for CAD software depends on several factors, including these: The country in which you purchase the software (USA workers get the baseline price, with customers in nearly every other country paying as much as double) Educational status (students and teachers routinely get the software free; other occupations do not -- except for software reviewers) The status of your company (networked licenses cost less; bulk licenses cost less) Whether you are part of a target market (I hear cases of software being seeded, given away free to specific customer in specific cities of specific disciplines; in addition,... Read more →

Boo! France's new higher taxes = 200 fewer jobs at Dassault. Scary!

We used to have a socialist premier of our province. Like any socialist politician who never held a real job before ascending to power, he did not understand money. It was near the end of his term (he resigned in disgrace over a casino owner arranging to add a deck to the premier's home) that he began to catch on to the immutable rule: money out = money in. I remember him saying, I never understood that when I gave government employees a raise, I needed to also raise taxes to pay for the raise (or something like that). If... Read more →

When CAD executives and financial analysts don't understand each other

Financial analysts use their own secret language when communicating with industry executives, as we have documented here in earlier times. During Dassault Systemes' conference call last week, h however, financial analysts and company executives at one point had a hard time understanding each other: Unidentified Analyst: And on the churn rate for Solidworks Q1 Q2 Q3? Dassault CEO Bernard Charles: Can you repeat it, please? Analyst: You said that the churn rate of Solidworks was steady in Q3, but I would like just to compare it to Q1 and Q2, and how does it compare to 2009? The maintenance contract... Read more →

Bernard Charles says, We've explained it to the Solidworks user community...

During Dassault Systemes' conference call last week with financial analysts, ceo Bernard Charles said that his company has been keeping Solidworks users up to date: ...we have high level of motivation from the user community. And of course, this is critical because we are preparing the evolution of the generation of Solidworks to continue to unify our 3DEXPERIENCE platform, which was also stated during the announcement. We explained to our user community that over time, the convergence between Solidworks and the 3DEXPERIENCE [a.k.a. "the V6 architecture"] platform will bring benefits, being able to provide upside with application portfolio. Later, he... Read more →