Autonomy delivers in '05, says '06 is exciting: Market applauds
The stock market re-endorsed Silicon Fen's software giant Autonomy after it released strong results for 2005 and said it was very confident about 2006 by pushing up in share price by 1.5%, back to near the year's high.
The company, which specialises in sophisticated data management software, said full year profits for the year to end December jumped by 135% to $22m on sales that increased by 48% to $96m. Those figures showed, as chief executive and founder Mike Lynch said, "the high operational gearing inherent in our business model, with operating margins continuing to surge with increasing revenues."
The results included a 69% leap in revenues in the last three months of 2005 from very strong growth in the US/Asia Pacific region and the contribution of acquisition etalk.
Overall, Dr Lynch said that "2005 was an extraordinary, transformational year for Autonomy and we are looking forward to 2006 with great excitement and confidence in our long-term outlook."
Autonomy's share price has been on a more or less steady climb since its all-time low of 90.25p reached on October 2002. That trough followed the always unrealistic dotcom boom price of 2050p in late 2000. The steady ascent since the beginning of 2005 has seen the price more than double and it was close to recent highs at 420p on Monday.
During the fourth quarter of 2005, major new clients for its product range included Symantec, Bell Canada, Cablevision, Euromoney, Goodyear, John Deere, Pioneer National Resources, Rockwell Collins, Standard & Poors and the Shanghai News Agency.
Repeat business from existing customers accounted for about 34% of revenue for the quarter, and included Banco de Espana, Bearing Point, Credit Suisse, Ericsson, Felix Telecom, HBO, SAIC, Seicos, Shell and T-Mobile.
Q4 2005 business included new and repeat licenses with several government, defence and intelligence agencies including in the U.S., Spain, France, the U.K., Greece, Sweden and Switzerland.
The company's OEM Program increased sales by 21% to $13.8 million, accounting for about 14% of revenues. Fifteen new OEM agreements were signed with major software companies including Symantec, BEA and Vignette.
Autonomy introduced key new and upgraded technologies during the fourth quarter. It announced and completed the acquisition of Verity, Inc., cementing its position as the industry leader - acknowledged by IT-industry analysts Gartner Inc - and extending the adoption of Autonomy's IDOL infrastructure.
Autonomy's consumer division announced the creation of a conceptual index of the World Wide Web, available so consumer facing companies can offer their customers next generation search technologies across the Web.
Also, for the first time enterprise users will be able to fully integrate retrieval, from the desktop to enterprise content to Internet content, based on "the understanding of the meaning of the information" - in effect, Autonomy's unique selling proposition - all on a private basis.
In November Autonomy's Virage division launched the Virage Security and Surveillance product range to add new precision and intelligence capabilities to security and surveillance operations.
