Quickie: PTC’s FQ3 is right where they said it would be

Sorry to interrupt your beach day, but it’s earnings season and PTC just reported that FQ3 GAAP revenue was $289 million, right in the middle of the target of $287 million to $292 million, and down 5% from a year ago. You’ll recall that PTC is (also, still) in the midst of a change from all-perpetual to some-subscriptions; that makes it hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison on a revenue basis.

PTC tries to help with that by issuing lots of data that tried to quantify the benefits of subscriptions to its business. Some of these include:

• License and subscription bookings of $105 million in FQ3, higher than the top end of guidance of $90 million to $100 million
• Subscriptions were 58% of total bookings, well above the guidance of 48%, and WAY up from 16% a year ago
• PTC thinks this rapid adoption of subs reduced revenue by approximately $11 million. Had that not occurred, then, total revenue would have been $300 million which is more or less even with last year’s reported revenue of $303 million
• The total subscription annualized contract value (ACV) in FQ3 2016 was $30 million; above guidance of $22 to $24 million
• But looking for more natural comparisons, software revenue as reported was down $11 million, or 5% on a constant currency (cc) basis

CEO Jim Heppelmann said that he was “very pleased with our third quarter performance. Customers are rapidly adopting our subscription offering, accelerating our business model transition, and our improved execution led to a strong bookings performance, beating the high end of our guidance for the quarter.”

Lots more to come –geos, products, guidance, the why of it all– after the earnings call.

Remember, too, that Dassault Systemes reports earnings tomorrow. A big week in PLMish finance.