Highlights From Autodesk's (ADSK) Q4 Conference Call: Global Slowdown Impacting All Business Segments
Last night, Autodesk (Nasdaq: ADSK) reported Q4 earnings of $0.31, 10 cents better estimates. Revenues were $491 million vs. the consensus of $484.45 million. However, ADSK sees Q1 EPS between $0.00-$0.12 vs. the consensus of $0.27. ADSK sees Q1 revenues between $400-$440 million vs. the consensus of $472 million. Investors have frowned on the weak outlook - shares are down almost 9% this morning.
Highlights from the Q4 conference call:
- The global economic downturn is now significantly impacting each of our major geographies, and all of our business segments.
- The Americas has experienced weakness for five quarters now and it is not yet clear if it has hit bottom. On the positive side, we continue to make strong inroads with our government sales.
- Revenue from Asia-Pacific decreased 25% as reported and 28% in constant currency, as a result of economic headwinds in large developed markets like Japan, Korea and Australia.
- We remain confident that emerging economies will be a key growth area for Autodesk, once we get past this downturn.
- Sees Q1 & Q2 savings achieved through head count reduction of approximately 10%, facilities consolidations, a hiring freeze, travel restrictions and a variety of other cost reduction initiatives.
- While, we are not providing revenue or EPS guidance for the full year, we believe that if the economic environment stays the same our operating margin will increase through the year as our restructuring actions begin to have a greater impact.
- We have continued to think that our maintenance revenue will grow well and that there -- that we'll see good bookings on that, as long as there are people in those seats, so the job losses affect that; I don't think it was tremendously different than we expected.
- I don't really see any signs (that we've bottomed) and what I'm really looking is at broadly - the broad economic indicators, things like job loss, construction starts or things like foreclosures, all the typical economic data that everybody is looking at.
- Credit financing is a big deal for our customers. Small, Medium and even our largest customers generally rely on credit to finance products and projects. And until there is more liquidity back in the system, until people are really able to get credit, it's going to be difficult for many of these businesses to return to the levels that they are used to.
- We think in an environment where people are very value sensitive that's a way to provide more value to our customers. And we are going to continue to roll those (new products) out through the year.
- We're looking at is we're trying to preserve cash as much as possible. I would say our tolerance for acquisitions has gone way down in this environment. And I would say just the M&A market in general I feel is going to go down, because I think there is going to be a difficulty in aligning the expectations of buyers and sellers.
Autodesk, Inc. is a design software and services company. The Company offers products and solutions to customers in the architectural, engineering, construction, manufacturing, geospatial mapping and digital media markets.
Create E-mail AlertRelated Categories
Corporate NewsEarnings
Stocks Mentioned
+0.04Related Entities
Sign up for StreetInsider Free!
Receive full access to all new and archived articles, unlimited portfolio tracking, e-mail alerts, custom newswires and RSS feeds - and more!
