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Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

CAD Giants Make it Big in 2005, Part 2

22 Feb, 2006 By: Sara Ferris

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Dassault Systèmes reports 18% revenue growth over 2004

CAD heavyweights UGS and Dassault Systèmes recently released year-end earnings reports, and both recorded double-digit growth. Last week, we looked at the details of the UGS report. Today, we'll look at Dassault. In a future issue, we'll review Autodesk's performance for last year, once those figures are released.

For its part, Dassault Systèmes reported total revenue of EUR 934.5 million (about US$1.12 billion) for 2005, up 18% from the previous year (16% excluding acquisitions). Dassault's big buy last year was ABAQUS, whose technology now appears in Dassault's SIMULIA digital simulation offering.

Dassault's PDM products ENOVIA and SMARTEAM attracted more than 1,000 new customers and delivered 20% revenue growth. SolidWorks revenue grew by 25% as its user base approached half a million.

Fourth-quarter sales included CATIA V5 wins at Dong Feng Electric Machinery Works and BT Industry, CATIA/SMARTEAM wins at Alpine Electronics and NIKON, and DELMIA wins at Tata Motors and Aermacci. SolidWorks added new customers such as Duracell and Wabash National in the United States, LSW Maschinenfabrik and Schmitz Cargobull in Germany and Cosmos Machinery Limited in China.

Total CATIA and SolidWorks seats licensed in 2005 were 72,078, representing an increase of 15% over the 62,577 seats licensed in 2004. CATIA licenses increased by 6% to 34,798 in 2005, compared with 32,695 in 2004.

In 2005, SolidWorks revenue increased 25% to EUR 181.8 million (about US$227 million), which amounts to 19% of Dassault's total revenue in 2005. SolidWorks seats licensed increased 25% to 37,280 seats in 2005 on strong demand across all major geographic markets.

From a regional perspective, the Americas delivered the strongest growth in 2005, increasing 24% in constant currencies, with Europe growing 19% and Asia posting an increase of 13% in constant currencies. As a percentage of total revenue, Europe accounted for 47%, followed by the Americas at 30% and Asia at 23%.

Dassault's president and CEO Bernard Charles sees "significant growth ahead of us" in the PLM area, he says, noting strong adoption in aerospace. Dassault groups five of its brands under the PLM moniker: CATIA, SIMULIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA and SMARTEAM.

Dassault continues work on integrating ABAQUS into its existing organization. It recently announced a SIMULIA Partner Program, which will encompass digital prototyping and simulation partners from both the ABAQUS Alliance Program and the CAA V5 community. The first partner is LMS, developer of LMS Virtual.Lab for analyses such as structural dynamics, noise and vibration, acoustic radiation, multibody motion, fatigue and reliability.

Charles attempted to diffuse any concerns that IBM and Dassault are parting ways, noting that IBM recently confirmed the strategic nature of their partnership. The recent announcement that IBM will sell PTC's PLM offering in China, as well as to certain industries, came from PTC, not IBM, he says, and is "not aligned with what the field operations may be."

IBM is certainly backing Dassault's 3DXML open format for 3D publishing, adding support for it into its Lotus Notes, Domino and IBM Workplace products.