In case Altium deletes this post on their forum:
We're screwed -
https://www.yahoo.com/now/edited-transcript-alu-ax-earnings-223000483.htmlSome tidbits - you don't even have to read very far:
" During this call, Aram and Martin will elaborate on Altium's performance for the half year fiscal 2021. We will share details of how we have pivoted to the cloud, bifurcated our sales into digital sales and high-end professional sales and divested our TASKING business to concentrate our focus on accelerating the adoption of our cloud platform, Altium 365, for dominance and industry transformation. "
Dominance... need the cat-o-nine tails and some leather...
" Thanks, Kim, and good morning, everyone. After 8 consecutive years of double-digit revenue growth, Altium experienced a 4% decline in first half revenue. This performance for the first half reflects the combination of the effect of extreme COVID conditions and Altium's Netflix moment, which is a hard pivot to the cloud. "
Think there's a reason for this? You can't possibly not read your own forum and ask that...
" You can think of FY '21 first half as Altium's pit stop. After 8 years of racing around the track and delivering record performances, we took advantage of COVID and did a major overhaul of our business in switching to the cloud. This pre-vaccine period presented a perfect opportunity to fast-track our transition from the pursuit of market leadership to the pursuit of dominance and industry transformation. During the first half, on the back of a successful launch of Altium 365, we leaned strongly into our journey of dominance and transformation and took advantage of the conditions to undertake a major restructuring and pivoted hard to the cloud. This has included the separation of our CAD software business from our cloud business and the reorganization of our sales model into high touch and high volume. We made a strategic decision to divest our TASKING business to allow us to singularly focus on the expansion of the Altium 365 platform and to drive its adoption for transformation. It is against the background and what has been achieved that I consider Altium's performance in the first half to be potentially a game-changing performance in the opening year of our next 5 years in pursuit of dominance and transformation. "
He's gotta be kidding.
" In addition to our Netflix organizational changes, we have subsequently accelerated further towards industry transformation by forming a new business unit, which we are calling Nexar. Nexar's mission is to build an ecosystem for our new cloud platform, Altium 365. With the divestment of TASKING, Altium will have 2 unique and complementary business units. These are Boards and Systems, which provides PCB design software solutions and indirectly monetizes Altium 365 through enhancement of the value of subscriptions associated with design tools; and Nexar, which provides professionals and industry partners with access to the vast ecosystem of electronic design and manufacturing users and customers and, in the process, directly monetizes Altium 365. Nexar includes Octopart and smart manufacturing. "
Hmmm... Nexar? Netflix moment? Like that's like me comparing myself to some porn star. Not happening..
There's more if you read the entire transcript.
Some highlights of questions:
" Lucy Huang, BofA Securities, Research Division - Analyst [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So I just have 3. So firstly, in relation to the margin guidance from FY '21 to '25, just noticed that the range has been lowered slightly. So just wondering what you're now accounting for in terms of increased costs over the next few years. And then just secondly, it looks like the lapse rates in the subscription business has ticked up a bit. Are you able to talk through what the dynamics that are happening with the lapse rates in the business? "
Uh lady - read the forum...
The following question:
"And secondly and lastly, I guess Cadence would probably be the main kind of other competitor data point we can look to in the market. It's looking like they are outperforming in the December half, including in their -- the division with holds their PCB. I understand there's a fair -- few moving parts in that business. But I guess what can you tell us about what you're seeing from the competitor set? And do you have any concerns that there's a potential slippage of market share or no on that front? "
In a word - KiCAD.
" That's helpful. Just a clarification on that. So when you're seeing high discounting from competitors like Cadence, does that impact your business? Are you able to see that up in your results? And to what degree if at all do you need to match or, I guess, have your own pricing kind of reflect what you're seeing amongst the competition? "
Uhhh....
" Just a couple from me. So the first one is just on Slide 7. So I just want to understand the way of structuring the chart. With the dip in monthly active users and really slight dip in monthly active accounts that goes through the first 2 weeks of January, is that just because people aren't logging in? Or is that actually people stopping becoming users, and then you've got a big acceleration out the other side of that? "
What do you think?