The call for industry press, industry analysts, financial press, and financial analysts promised financial highlights for 2010 and notable company achievements for 2010, with 2011 updates from CEO Greg Bentley and other members of the Bentley executive team. A Q&A followed. This was the first of what are planned to be annual calls at this time of year.
The 2010 Annual Report was released today in NXTbook format (link).
Statistics
- $476M for 2010, best since 2008's $501M (corrected typo; was incorrectly $581)
- 6% growth in 2010, 74% revenue from subscriptions up from 64% in 2007
- 6% is goal for organic growth
- 20% of software revenue invested in R & D
- 20% of revenue from ENR 500
- increases in hours utilized in software since 2009
- no net debt
- family and company own 85% of company
- Asia 16% of revenue
- revenues doubled in China in three years
- #2 in AEC after Autodesk
- #3 in geospatial after Esri and Hexagon/Intergraph
New Licensing Model
- No depreciation via portfolio balancing for Select Subscribers - users can exchange less used software for more used software (of equal value)
New Interoperability Initiative
iModels are containers for making content interoperable. Bentley's apps and plug-ins for these are now called iWare Apps and are available free.
New Acquisition
Bentley announced the cquisition of offshore structure analysis SACS (used for offshore wind). It will be integrated into other Bentley products.
Questions
Q: Example of portfolio balancing?
A: AE firm was doing site design, but now doing structural. Could swap SitePak to RAM and STAAD at time of renewal (based on matched list price).
Q: How does that work with enterprise licensing?
A: I didn't understand the answer but I think it sort of brings enterprise license ideas to smaller players.
Q: How does iWare bridge interop work and work with standards?
A: They support situations where there is no standard (like Revit), but also support standards (IFC, Leed, OGC).
Q: Revenues from SACS? Price of purchase? Repurchased from?
A: No answer on first too (as was promised in intro). Repurchase from outside investors and Intergraph.
Q: Who are competitors and how did you gain during downturn?
A: Autodesk. They have a "like sale" intent which is more cyclicly vulnerable vs. our more subscription focused vision.
Q: App Store: Possibility for broader apps? (Kathleen Maher, who really got me my start in this biz.)
A: We used it internally first before putting these tools out there. It lubricates workflows. Others can build them too.
Q: It's impressive you are privately held. Ever thought of getting into backoffice of your customers?
A: No, just ProjectWise.
Q: Color on customer segment?
A: We have real time log info on what are users are using and share it. Surprised at how firms were busy through the recession in the annual report. Avg hours on license per week increased 20%. People are doing more with no extra hires. Privately funded user went down, publicly funded one continued to grow (geo is in this group). We are expecting this to cause more license purchases in coming years.
Q: Can SACS be used to locate wind farms? (Remko Tekken, GIS Magazine)
A: (Greg Bentley: US 40% of our market. Most of our sales are international.) SACS is structural analysis, not geo. But we can integrate it with other products, so perhaps in the future.
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