ESI Group reported results yesterday for the year ended January 31 — and investors like. A lot. ESI’s share price is up over 7% at mid-day trading in Paris. The details:
• Total revenue for the year was €75.1 million, up 7.1% as reported or nearly 4% in constant currencies. As you’ll see below, almost all of the increase came from the company’s Mindware acquisition, closed in December 2008.
• Licenses revenue was €54 million, up 3%, led by recurring revenue of €46 million (up 6%) while new revenue fell 7%.
• Services revenue €21 millions, an increase of almost 20% due in large part to the company’s Mindware acquisition, which contributed revenue of €5.2 million euros. Excluding Mindware, services revenue declined 11.3%, reflecting the “wait-and-see attitude still shown by many clients”, according to ESI’s press release.
• Mindware also changed the company’s geographic profile, shifting more emphasis to the US. For the year just concluded, 22% of sales were in the Americas, 45% in Europe and 33% in Asia, as compared to 16%, 49% and 35%, respectively, in the prior fiscal year.
For Q4, total revenue was up 10% to €30 million per the company’s back-end loaded year. License revenue was up 12% to €25 million, and reflected “external growth [that was] close to zero.” The company did note a number of indicators that lead it to optimism for 2010: the installed base rose by 9.5%; repeat business for licenses reached a new record high of 94%, versus 79% for the Q4 a year ago; and new business grew for the first time over the year, up 31%.”
CEO Alain de Rouvray said in a prepared statement that Q4 beat expectations and characterized the company’s full-year performance as “good … given the economic situation.” M. de Rouvray goes on to say that “[t]his performance … provides confirmation of our business model solidity, based on the annual rental of our licenses and benefiting from a high level of repeat business, which generates an enviable visibility in the current economic context.”
The company will publish its annual accounts at the end of April, when we’ll be able to gather more details.