Quickie: PTC’s FQ4 as expected — and a huge SLM deal

You might recall that PTC pre-announced its fourth fiscal quarter earlier this month that set expectations for Q4 revenue rather low but raised the bar on future results. Today, the company filled in the details:

• Total revenue in FQ4 was down 8% from a year ago to $288 million, below its original guidance and well short of Wall Street expectations
• Lower than planned revenue also hit the bottom line, as profit fell to $22.88 million from $77.07 million in last year’s fourth quarter
• Software revenue was $240 million, down 10% because of the greater proportion of subscriptions
• Subscription revenue was $41 million, more than double the FQ4 2015 total
• Perpetual license revenue was $41 million, down 48% from a year ago
• PTC estimates that the higher mix of subscriptions lowered software revenue by about $63 million.
• Maintenance revenue (aka “Support”) was $158 million, down 5%
• License and subscription bookings totaled $142 million, up 35% from a year ago and well ahead of the company’s expectations. As we learned in the preannouncement, this was partially driven by two subscription mega deals (with bookings of over $5 million). Today we learned that one deal was for SLM booking (valued at $20 million)
• Annualized subscription contract value (ACV) was $50 million in FQ4, up 365% from a year ago. Again, the two mega deals
• FQ4 2016 subscription bookings were 70% of total bookings, up from 20% in FQ4 2015
• And here’s the main point: “this higher than guidance mix of subscription in [FQ4], while positive in the long-term, reduced revenue by approximately $35 million and reduced non-GAAP EPS by approximately $0.61 as compared to Q4’15 subscription mix”.

The company said it expects FQ1 revenue in the range of $285 million to $290 million for FQ1 and about $1,200 million for fiscal 2017. That annual total would return PTC to revenue growth.

There’s lots of detail to get into –like what’s up with that HUGE SLM deal and is it repeatable– more after I listen to the earnings call.