Dassault Systemes Sa Adr

Good afternoon, everyone, or good morning. This is Beatrix Martinez, Test Assistant VP, Investor Relations. From the company, we have Pascal Dalloz, CEO, and Ruben Bachmann, CFO. Thank you for joining our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call with Pascal Dalloz, Chief Executive Officer, and Ruben Bachmann, Chief Financial Officer here in London. At the end of the presentation, we will take questions from participants. And deficit system results are prepared in accordance with IFRS. Most of the financial figures in this conference call are presented on a non-IFRS basis with revenue growth rates and constant currencies unless otherwise stated. For an understanding of the differences between the IFRS and the non-IFRS, please see the reconciliation tables included in our press release. Some of the comments we will make during today's presentation will contain forward-looking statements that could differ materially from actual results. Please refer to today's press release and the risk factors section in our 2023 Document d'enregistrement universel, published on March 18, 2024. I will now hand over to Pascal.

Thank you, Béatrix. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. It's, as you say, Beatrice, always a pleasure to be with you here in London. Let's start first with the first quarter results. So software revenue rose by 7%, driven by the 3D experience up 29. I think we delivered an operating margin of 31.1%, slightly outperforming our profitability objectives. And thanks to the discipline cost management, Our EPS was strong, up 12% at constant currency. In the first quarter, our 3DEXPERIENCE business delivered strong results, with a significant number of top industry leaders in manufacturing now on board to our platform. And they benefited from its science-driven approach, the integrative capabilities, and obviously the cloud flexibility. Looking ahead, we have a strong 3DEXPERIENCE pipeline And Ruben will come back on this. In life sciences, we are devoted to replicating our success in other industries, providing a hand-to-hand platform. And this transformation lays the foundation for sustainable new source of growth. On a short term, we anticipate MediData return to growth in the second half of 2024. Therefore, supported by the 3DE experience businesses and the good momentum and the MediData outlook, we confirm our guidance for the full year. Now, let me say a few words about the vision and the strategy. As you may know, while we are rooted in the presence, we also want to make a positive impact on the world. And shaping the generative economy is the next step in our journey. The generative economy goes beyond extending the virtual twins to living organisms. It's about learning from life, to adopt a net positive way of living. And usually the way I'm summarizing it is by giving back to the planet and the society more than what we take. More than what we take for the manufacturing, for the trading, or for the usage of the product or services. To do this, you need a more holistic view of the entire life cycle and the impacts are becoming extremely critical. So, for example, if you take mobility, It involves environments with passengers, vehicles, buildings, air qualities, and we need to create the virtual twin of all the different systems, if you want. It's exactly the same in life sciences. If you want to focus on the cancer treatments, it's as a result of the organic process. So to support this transformation, we combine multiple virtual twins experienced together into what we call universes. The universes is really a way to unify the virtual and the real at the same time. During the last quarter, if you remember, we showcased a concrete example of an early adoption of the universes. The company was Biogen, a leading American biotech company specializing in neurological disease. And if you remember what I told you, they were connecting the virtual twin of the patient brains and the spinal column with the drug. Virtual twin in order to determine the best and the optimal way to do the drug injections And I think this is a good illustration of what the universe can do to transition from in vivo to in silico testing Now this holistic approach is made possible through our 3d experience data science platform and why it's a data science platform because it's enabled the clients to connect the data from experience on one hand and and the model from science on the other end. And with the 3DEXPERIENCE data science platform, our clients are already achieving impressive results. Just a few examples. If you take aerospace and defense, we have many clients improving the reliability and the availability of the critical assets. If you take the consumer industry, many of them are tracking the churn, finding a way to reduce it, and at the same time, increase the cross-selling and the upselling opportunity. And more and more, many people are also doing the price management with these capabilities. In transportation and mobility, most of our customers are using the generative AI in 3DEXPERIENCE data science platform as a way to manage the supply chain in a flexible way, especially to navigate across the food creation in the raw material, energy, and component prices. It's also a way for them to do significant saving in raw material procurements, and it's also a way for them to optimize the product performance, whatever it's the weight and balance or durability and costs. In the consumer packaged goods, the key topic is the product reformulations to comply with sustainability regulation while ensuring the best possible consumer experience. In this case, the data science capability of the platform is extremely useful. Just a few examples to illustrate that it's just the beginning, and we firmly believe that our generative AI engines will increasingly empower the customers to nurture the circularity of the platform, I mean, the capabilities the platform is offering, and more importantly, to elevate the data into valuable knowledge and know-how. Now, let's return to the business trend we observed in the first quarter. Starting with the manufacturing industry, we have already highlighted the excellent performance of our 3D experience platform and the progress in terms of adoption within our install base. Looking ahead, I think we have a strong pipeline in transportation and mobility, aerospace and defense, and we also are more and more gaining traction in consumer goods and consumer packaged goods. So this is positioning us to secure major contracts within the industry leader in 2024. Now turning to life sciences, the sector is currently pivoting towards three things. Patient-centricity, technology transfer from the labs to the bioreactors, and the utilization of the generative AI to foster and foster the innovations. And I think Medidata offers the most comprehensive platform to design, launch, and conduct advanced clinical trials. Why so? Because in a unique way, it connects all the stakeholders, whatever it is, the pharmaceutical companies, the hospital, the patient from home, and this is simplifying the collaborations between all of them. This connectivity is really crucial as the data source diversify, underscoring the importance of these differentiations. In the infrastructure and city sector, decarbonization is also crucial, contributing to one-third of the global emissions. And the sustainability topic is really driving commitments to tripling nuclear capacity, shifting to clean energy, and innovating for efficiency. And among these challenges is reviving nuclear construction at scale and shortening the time between nuclear construction and commissioning. Now, let's have a look on the wins for this quarter, the most emblematic one. I will characterize this quarter by, you know, the quarter where we have a lot of win back. And one of them, which is an interesting one, is Volvo Car. As you may know, they are using CATIA for a long time, but they were using other systems in conjunction with CATIA. And this quarter, Volvo has adopted and took the decision to adopt the 3DX front platform under multi-year agreements to transform their engineering processes. And this is a significant milestone in our partnership because This will imply that the 1,500 users from Catia V5 will migrate to Catia's 3D experience platform. It means also that we'll transition from a multiple standard solution to a unique and scalable platform. This also means that they will change the way they work to facilitate the real-time collaboration and reduce the time to market, especially by, you know, through the integration of the hardware and the software, which is becoming, you know, the key roadblocker in this industry. And the savings are not measuring anymore in hours or weeks. We are talking about months. So it's really a major milestone. Additionally, Volvo Car will also use our lifecycle management capabilities to reduce the carbon footprint per car by 40% from 2018-2025. So I think it's just the beginning of the Volvo Car journey with the 3D Expense Platform. Providing also further opportunity to expand into new domains such as system of systems much seems or data science not speaking about the manufacturing now, let's review the customer testimonial in life sciences sector and This quarter we have this place Viva at TFS You know and TFS is a leading global contract research organizations at quarter in Sweden and they are selected the medi data rave solutions and because it provides a single platform to connect against all the stakeholders. The investigators from the pharma companies, the practitioners from the hospital, and the patients from home. And this is a unique capability on the market, as the MediData platform will give them the ability to integrate and streamline their data management and trial management operation at the same time. In addition, they are using MediData AI as a way to accelerate the clinical trial timelines by enhancing the study enrollment and the feasibility, especially having the ability to select wisely the different sites they will enroll to make the clinical trial. In conclusion, I think MediData will play a pivotal role in supporting TFS to accelerate the delivery of the new treatment to the market. Now let's move to infrastructures and cities. Sizewell C, a well-known company in Britain, because they are the one providing the, I mean, they, I mean, planning to provide the electricity for more than 6 million households in the UK, has selected the 3DEXPANS platform to increase the nuclear capacity, to enable the nuclear constructions, and more importantly, to reduce the time to operations. will ensure, in fact, a smooth delivery, operation, and maintenance of the future facilities. This is the first step of their project with us, with the potential to increase our footprint from more than 200 users right now to more than 1,000 in the coming months, along with transitioning to the cloud. So it's really an interesting case. And this is, I think, also a clear win, underscoring the role of decarbonization as a driving force for this sector to adopt our solutions. In conclusion, before handing over to Ruben, let me do a quick wrap-up. First, I think we had a solid start of the year, and our 3D experience platform delivered strong results, and more importantly, we have a strong pipeline going forward. Two, in life science, the sector is pivoting, And I think we are uniquely positioned to address those changes. And more importantly, we anticipate maybe data return to growth in the second half of the year. Simultaneously, I think we are laying off the foundation for our future growth by leveraging the 3D Expand platform enabling clients to connect data from experience on one hand and do generative AI with the model from science on the other hand. And this will definitely nurture the ability to elevate the data into valuable knowledge and know-how, which is the purpose of Dassault Systems. Now, I think it's time to focus on Q1 performance and the outlook for Q2 2024 and the rest of the year. Reuven, you have the floor. Thank you, Pascal. And good morning and good afternoon to you listening to our call now. As you heard, we are entering into the year with a solid start. as we remained focused on the fundamentals of our business model. The combination of subscription revenue and upfront license revenue together grew 9%, while the operating margin was up 50 basis points to 31.1%, and EPS grew 12%. We knew coming into this year and into the first quarter of the year that metadata would weigh on our subscription growth. In this context, subscription revenue is up 10%. Excluding metadata, subscription revenue is strong, up 22%, driven by good growth in 3D experience. The share of recurring revenue remains high at 84%. Upfront license revenue in the first quarter was good, up by 7%, driven in part by the strong performance in our business in Asia and a Slightly stronger demand for CapEx investments supporting our customers' business model preferences. Adding to the fundamentals, we generated $671 million in operating cash flow. While this is below last year's level, cash flow conversion remains healthy at 1.44 times of non-IFRS operating income. This trend reflects the progressive shift of subscription as we see a more ratable cash generation going forward throughout this year. Now let's review briefly how we performed relative to our objectives in Q1 2024. Total revenue was at $1.5 billion, and in line with our objectives, just slightly below the midpoint. The lower software and service revenue were partially offset by currency. operating margin was at 31.1% above the high end of the objectives driven by disciplined expense management. Importantly, we continue to invest to support our strategic initiatives with a net headcount growth of around 1,200 over the last 12 months. This sets a strong basis for continued growth as well as much improvement in the future. As mentioned earlier, EPS at $0.30 is reflecting good operating performance and strong financial income in Q1. So to summarize the financials, in the context of the metadata transformation, we delivered solid financials in the first quarter. Lower contribution and subscription revenue was offset by stronger upfront license. Clearly, 2024 is a back-end loaded year like 2023, underpinned by continued momentum in 3D experience and return to growth for metadata. Profitability is strong as a result of effective cost control, but we continue to make focused investments to shape our strategic growth drivers of 3D experience and cloud in support of our full year and midterm objectives. Now let's move to our growth drivers of 3D experience and cloud. 3D experience revenue rose 29% in Q1 at constant currency driven driving the share of 3DEXPERIENCE to 36% of addressable software revenue. In this quarter, three-fourths of the growth related to 3DEXPERIENCE is driven by deals larger than $2 million, highlighting strong value of potential and the momentum in our customer base. In Q1, we had several key customers expanding the 3DEXPERIENCE platform use, such as Volvo, Honda, Dana, Damien Shipyards, B. Brown, as well as EDF. Cloud revenue grew 6% in Q1 due to the anticipated slower metadata growth contribution. Ex-medidata cloud revenue was up around 50%, driven by the continued growth momentum in 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud. The cloud is now representing 24% of our Q1 software revenue. Key customers expanding 3D experience cloud use in the quarter were Renault, Dassault Aviation, Wilk Construction, Schindler, Honda, and Sanofi, besides many others. We are confident that we will further capitalize on the momentum of our growth drivers and continue to grow our market share in 2024. Now let me highlight to you the performance across geos and product lines. Americas was up 5%, which was in part due to the lower anticipated contribution from metadata this quarter. Excluding metadata, the Americas is up 9%, driven by strong momentum in home and lifestyle, aerospace and defense, and a very durable growth in transportation and mobility. Europe was up 7%, with strong double-digit growth in north and west regions. We saw a well-diversified growth profile across multiple industries, such as transportation and mobility, energy and materials, construction, and again, home and lifestyle. Asia had a rebound in Q1, which was led by strong growth in China, up 17%, driving the strong license performance in the quarter. Also, Japan, India, and Korea delivered high single-digit software revenue costs. From a product line standpoint, we saw continued good momentum in industrial innovation, with growth of 9%. CATIA and Inovia were up high single-digit, while Delmia and NetWipes were up double-digit in software revenue. Subscription revenue already represents more than two times the license revenue in industrial innovation, and it grew this quarter by 20%. Life sciences software revenue was minus 2% overall, with metadata at minus 3% versus a strong comparison base in Q1. On the other hand, Biovia had a good quarter, delivering high single-digit growth in software revenue, driven by strong renewals and expansions with major customers such as Regeneron, Gilead, and Takeda. Now let me provide you with an update on the market trends in clinical trials and our progress since the beginning of the year. First, on a trailing 12-month basis, we see market growth trends normalizing. In fact, since the beginning of the year, over the last three months, study stats are stabilizing to be slightly up, and this compares to a minus 10% decline at this time last year. Second, in this improving market environment, our growth bookings in Q1 support our plan to return to growth in H2O. In fact, our study-based bookings are back to growth, driven by an increase in the partner consumption. In addition, we have started to see increasing activity in the mid-sized pharma market, which has always been a catalyst of our growth. And lastly, and important to highlight, you're competing well with win rates up across all segments, driving market share gains in phase three trials. To summarize, our market share dynamics are positive, adding about two points versus last year. Mainstream innovation is up 10%, driven by excellent performance of Centric PLM. In this quarter, we won Abercrombie & Fitch, our largest deal in fashion and apparel business. This, plus strong renewals, delivered excellent performance. For SolidWorks, we are clearly transitioning to a subscription model at scale. Subscription revenue is growing over 60%, offsetting the decline in license. And we expect this trend to continue and further accelerate towards a higher share of subscription revenue, driving sustainable growth. As a key contributor to our growth, Centric PLM continues on its strong growth trajectory, signing new large enterprise deals quarter over quarter, adding new logos to our growing list of brands. In addition, we are successfully renewing with existing customers, expanding the share of wallet, and many other, you know, as we demonstrated with many customers this quarter. So the momentum, as you can see, is broad-based. Centric delivers an integrated platform from concept to customer, leveraging generative AI as a competitive differentiator. This is truly a new category of PLM, building a path to a billion-dollar-plus business. Now let me turn to cash flow and balance sheet RFRS items. Cash and cash equivalents totaled $4,096,000,000 compared to $3,568,000,000 at the end of 2023, which reflects an increase of $528,000,000. At the end of the quarter, our net cash position totaled $1,103,000,000, an increase of $526,000,000 versus a net cash of $578,000,000 on December 31, 2023. This clearly highlights a disciplined and efficient capital allocation. Now, let's look at what is driving our cash position at the end of the first quarter. We generated $671 million in operating cash flow for the quarter versus $783 million last year. Cash flow from operations was mainly impacted by a lower decrease in trade accounts receivables this quarter versus last year. And this can be explained by two main effects. an impact of over 65 million of receivables which shifted to April as customers pushed payment dates to after the bank holidays at the end of the quarter, almost all of them have been collected so far. Secondly, receivables are trending above last year's level due to the progressive adoption of our subscription model in which invoicing is spread over the contract term and creates a new pattern in which the cash is collected when compared to the upfront license model. In 2024, given the dynamics highlighted above, Q1 represents about 38% to 40% of the expected full-year operating cash flow. In previous years, Q1 averaged about 45% of the full-year operating cash flow. As such, we expect a positive catch-up effect already in Q2. And for any additional information, you will find the operating cash flow reconciliation our presentation published this morning. And to sum up, operating cash flow was mainly used for the repurchase of treasury shares of 131 million, investments in capex of 57 million, and repayment of lease liabilities of 24 million. Lastly, the total FX impact is about 33 million versus December 31st last year. Now let's move over to our objectives for 2024. Most important, we confirm our full year objectives. total revenue growth of 8% to 10%, operating margin at 32.5% to 32.8%, and EPS at €1.29 to €1.31. Our pipeline supports our growth objectives and is broad-based across multiple levels with a back-end loaded shape. We have good visibility in the continued momentum of 3D experience growth contribution, including sizable transactions. Medidata is on track to return to growth in H2 based on the stabilizing market environment of clinical trial starts and continued good execution as evidenced in win rates and market share gains. As mentioned, SOLIDWORKS is progressing well, transitioning to the subscription as planned. So as mentioned, we reaffirm our full year objective, which also includes a double-digit growth in recurring revenue in the range of 10 to 11. We expect upfront license to be in the range of 2% to 5% growth, and services revenue is expected in the range at 8% to 9%. Now, to update your models, I would like to share some additional information related to Q2. We expect total revenue and software revenue growth of 7% to 9% each, with upfront license revenue between minus 1% to plus 7%, recurring revenue up 9%, and subscription up between 15 to 16 percent. Services is expected to grow 6 to 7 percent. Our profitability is expected to continue to expand with operating margin up 50 basis point, at the midpoint reflecting a reported range of 31.3 percent to 31.5 percent. EPS is expected to be in the range of 30 cents to 31 cents, up 10 to 12 percent. Now let me conclude. We had a solid start to the year. Our core business is performing well and is expected to accelerate throughout the year. 2024 is a back-end loaded year, which is underpinned by continued momentum and 3D experience. For metadata, we see progress towards recovery in the second half, supported by the stabilization of the clinical trial market and good execution in terms of booking scores and win rates. As such, we are confirming our full year outlook and look forward to updating you throughout the year. We have several investor roadshows planned over the upcoming weeks, including in the United States, end of May, and we look forward to meeting with you in person. With this, I would like to return back to the operator. Pascal and I will be happy to take your questions.

Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star 11 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by. We'll compile your current arrow studies. We'll take a few moments. And now we're going to take our first question. And it comes from line of Jay Blischauer from Griffin Securities. Your line is open. Please ask your question.