Siemens AG on December 3 announced dismal results for its fiscal fourth quarter, ended September 30, with total revenue down 9% to €19.714 billion. According to the company, “While the global economy showed increasing signs of stabilizing, capital investment was still restrained in industrial and infrastructure markets in developed countries. Fourth quarter orders came in 16% below the same period a year earlier, while conversion of Siemens’ strong order backlog held the decline in fourth-quarter revenue to 9%.” That last sentence bodes badly for the next few quarters, too, as the a declining backlog will make it harder to reach revenue targets. Revenue from the Industry Sector, home of Siemens PLM Software, declined 13% from a year ago.

Overall, on a geographic basis, the sharpest revenue declines came from Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Africa and the Middle East, and in the Americas. In other words, everywhere except Asia.

The company said that it expects a recovery in the Industry Sector in the second half of fiscal 2010, but still expects lower total revenue for 2010 than in fiscal 2009. As a consequence, profit is also expected to be below the level of fiscal 2009, which means that restructuring measures begun in fiscal 2009 will continue “to the necessary extent” in fiscal 2010. No breakdowns are available for the Industry Sector, but Siemens AG cut about 22,000 jobs across the company in fiscal 2009, or about 5% of its global workforce. CEO Peter Loescher said during an analyst event Thursday that no company-wide job cuts are planned at present.

While the part we care about, the Siemens PLM business, is buried deep within the Industry sector, we can assume that it suffered the effects of the economy seen by other PLM vendors. Most of Siemens PLM’s revenue comes from the North America and Europe, with half coming from automotive and aerospace — all hardest hit, and slowest to recover. Those effects are only somewhat balanced by the fact that almost half of revenue comes from maintenance, leaving the business vulnerable. My model has overall revenue for CY2009 down between 10% and 15%, to about $1.3 billion, led by a decrease of about 30% in license revenue.

Finally, one interesting speculation: Siemens AG’s CFO Joe Kaeser said Thursday that it will put the Siemens IT Solutions and Services unit into a legally separate entity on July 1, 2010 and that an IPO is an option for this unit. According to Kaeser, the unit has 35,000 employees, of whom 10,000 are in Germany. Might we see Siemens PLM bundled into this business and, once again, spun out a ginormous parent company?