excerpted from
by
CAD/CAM Publishing
August 15, 2002 - Sales of CAD software giant Autodesk (Nasdaq:
ADSK) declined 9% year-to-year in the quarter ending July 31.
The slump hit the company across the board. Sales of Autodesk’s
CAD division, called Design Solutions, fell 7% year-to-year and
8% sequentially. Sales at its Discreet Logic division, which
makes animation and special-effects software, tumbled 17%
year-to-year and 8% sequentially.
Only Autodesk’s manufacturing group, which makes the Inventor
Series software, posted a year-to-year rise. However, the 21%
growth in the manufacturing unit’s sales looked good only by
comparison with the weakest quarter it has ever reported. Sales
declined 1% sequentially and at $33.3 million were well below
the $40.3 million record set 6 months earlier.
Sales of Autodesk’s manufacturing group have remained flat in
the 2-½ years that Autodesk has broken out its sales figures.
Autodesk’s sales were not too bad given the extent of the
worldwide recession, falling between Dassault (8% gain) and PTC
(20% drop).
Autodesk’s manufacturing-division sales have held up better than
the other units in the Design Solutions Division.
Autodesk’s challenge is to manage an increasingly diverse and
complex software portfolio in maturing markets. Much of
Autodesk’s profit comes from sales of what Autodesk calls its
platform and technology group, which amounted to $103 million in
the most recent quarter. This classification includes about $55
million worth of plain AutoCAD as well as sales of AutoCAD LT,
AutoSketch, and design collaboration services such as Buzzsaw
and Streamline. But plain AutoCAD sales are declining as the
software is displaced by other products that share little in
common, such as Inventor and the recently acquired Revit
software for building design. A year ago, quarterly sales of
plain AutoCAD exceeded $78.6 million according to the company’s
Form 10-Q, a financial statement filed with the U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission.
Autodesk’s bottom line has scarcely risen in five years, a
period in which the company has acquired new companies, launched
new product lines and formed costly vertical marketing groups.
This is illustrated below (click image to enlarge).
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to read more news from the August 15, 2002 issue:
-
Rapid prototyping helps separate conjoined twins
-- Doctors at UCLA’s Mattel Hospital used biomodels built with
an Objet Tempo to plan the complicated procedure.
-
Simplifying processes with SAP – By eliminating
EDS’ Metaphase from its operations, a maker of equipment for
chemical analysis simplified its engineering administration.
Find out what it took to make the switch and whether such
changes might make sense for your company.
-
MSC sales rise but profits decline -- Sales of
MSC Software rebounded following a disastrous first quarter, but
profits remained weak. A variety of factors produced this
outcome and cloud the company’s financial prognosis. Separately,
the FTC announced terms of its settlement with MSC in a dispute
over the acquisition of UAI and CSAR in 1999.
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