News

posted on 24 April 2008 15:19

Enterprise search vendor Autonomy's Q1 fy08 revenues grew 61 percent from the year-ago quarter but analysts were disappointed by its outlook.

Revenues for the first quarter of 2008 totalled $105.1 million, up from $65.5 million in Q1 fy 07, driven, Autonomy said, by strong organic growth and the contribution from ZANTAZ.

Q1 fy08 net profit (IFRS) was $16.4 million ($0.08/share) compared to net profit (IFRS) of $11.0 million ($0.06/share) in Q1 fy07.

Autonomy Group CEO Dr. Mike Lynch said: "Q1 unfolded as expected with its usual seasonality. At the same time various sectors shifted spending from general IT to regulatory and litigation-related purchases, making the direct effect of the sub-prime crisis a net positive for our business. Our regulatory, compliance and government-driven prospects, which account for the significant majority of our revenues, are proving robust."

Concerning Autonomy's outlook, Lynch said: "We have decided to maintain our conservative view on prospects, which we will review if, as expected, current strength continues. While the current economic conditions bring a degree of uncertainty to businesses, we have seen no negative changes from the model outlined at the beginning of 2008. We will continue to monitor the situation closely as the year unfolds, although currently our strong fundamental market dynamics suggest that we have good reason to be confident in the current outlook for the business."

The background to this is not the credit crunch/recession fgactor. Rather it is a shift from license sales to software-as-a-service (SaaS), the strengthof which is unknown and which could obviously affect license sales for Autonomy software such as IDOL.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}