Rand Worldwide today reported results for its first fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2011, with revenue of $22 million coming in slightly below expectations, but up from $17 million last year (though not an apples-to-apples comparison due to the closing of the Rand/Avatech merger on August 17 2010). A better comparison is sequential; for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2010, ended June 30, Rand reported revenue of $23 million, so the September quarter results represent a 4% sequential decline.
For the September quarter, product sales were $13 million (even with the prior quarter), services revenue was nearly $5 million (down slightly) and commission revenue was just under $4 million (down from $4.8 million). During the conference call with analysts, President and CFO Lawrence Rychlak said that 56% of software and subscription revenue comes from the AEC verticals; the remainder from manufacturing.
North America again dominated the business, with revenue of $19 million. During the FQ3 and FQ4 earning calls, CEO Marc Dulude had said that the company was seeing weakness in its Imaginit (Autodesk resale) business, resulting in an intensive review of its sales process; he expects to see improvement here over the coming quarters. Revenue from Singapore/Malaysia was just under $1 million and Australia, $1.7 million. Mr. Dulude said that Australia closed the company’s largest-ever deal there, $700,000.
Mr. Rychlak also broke out suites revenue, saying that 39% of software and subscription revenue was from suites, the remaining 61% from stand-alone products. It will be interesting to follow this breakdown to see if we can detect a trend regarding suites adoption — Autodesk says it is going well, but announces earnings tomorrow after the market closes.
Rand didn’t give specific forward-looking guidance but Mr. Dulude did indicate that the review of sales operations in North America was already providing benefit, and believes that December quarter revenue will be up.