Quickie: ESI reports slump in H1, boosts R&D investment

ESI Group today released results for the second quarter of fiscal 2018 (ending January 31, 2018, but which the company sometimes refers to as fiscal 2017). Overall, the results aren’t awful — the company suffered from both a touch comparable over a year ago, and ramped up investment spending on its Product Performance Lifecycle (PPL) and the digital twin, which ESI styles as Hybrid Twin, vision.

The details:

• License revenue in H1 was €39 million, down 3% as reported and down 4% in constant currencies (cc)contributed €
• Services revenue in H1 was €14.7 million, down 7% as reported and 7% cc
• SciLab, acquired in February 2017, contribute €0.3 million to revenue in the half year, so reported results more or less equal reported results
• ESI didn’t break down revenue by geo, other than to note that performance was “better in Europe (up 2.8%) than in the Americas (down 2.4%) and Asia (down 10.3%)”. However, comparables with respect to Asia were affected by a very strong services performance in 2016 in Japan

ESI says that it ramped up R&D spend by 3% as reported and by 9% excluding the French Research Tax Credit in the first half to advance the PPL and Hybrid Twin visions, and that it is reorganizing its sales force, especially in the US, to better position the company to bring to market its solutions.