PLMish earnings kick off with solid reports from PTC and AVEVA

PTC started things off on Wednesday evening, with a report that exceeded expectations. Fiscal second quarter revenue was up nearly 10%, above the high end of the company’s guidance as well as Wall Street expectations. I’m working on a longer post for later today, but for now, know that performance in FQ2 was so strong that CEO Jim Heppelmann is raising targets for the rest of the year. Why? “For the first half of the fiscal year, CAD bookings grew double-digits, far outpacing market growth, PLM bookings grew at market, ThingWorx continued to set the standard for Industrial Innovation Platforms, and interest in our augmented reality (AR) solutions accelerated.” CAD bookings up double digits! More to come.

Today is the day that Schneider Electric reports earnings, too — for the first time since its software assets merged with AVEVA’s. Because Schneider will report AVEVA’s financials with its own, that led to a slight change in AVEVA‘s typical earnings calendar and prompted the company to issue one of its periodic updates. What did we learn? Not much — but it sounds positive. Schneider Electric said that acquisitions contributed €88 million to its Q2 revenue, a total that includes the one-month consolidation of AVEVA. For its part, AVEVA said that it saw a stabilizing of conditions in its oil and gas and marine end markets, which accelerated revenue growth in the second half of the fiscal year — leading to full year revenue growth of “comfortable double digits” in constant currencies basis, up from 6% in the first half. A little bit of math says that revenue growth must have rocketed in the second half.  As far as the Schneider Electric Software (SES) business, AVEVA says it was “solid” during the year ended March 31, with no real change in market conditions. In all, SES reports low single digit revenue growth on a constant currency basis. We’ll know more when AVEVA reports with more detail on June 14.

So, two reports from two very different companies and end-industry profiles. A solid start to this earnings seasons, no?