Autonomy's 'extraordinary' '06 sees revenues up 161%, operating profits soar 275%
Autonomy Corporation plc (AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software and one of the stars in the Silicon Fen firmament, has reported a bumper 2006 and said it is looking forward to this year with "great excitement".
Full year revenues reached $250.7m from strong organic growth and full year contributions from recent acquisitions, while operating profit was $68.1m for the year ended December 31, both records. Adjusted profit before tax climbed to $69.1m from $21.9m in 2005.
After a string of good results and extensive briefings by management, the stock market appeared to be largely expecting the news and marked up just 0.5% to 580p. Market capitalisation has recently pushed through the £1 billion mark, and stood at £1.09 billion this morning.
CEO Mike Lynch (pictured) said: "2006 has been an extraordinary year for Autonomy by every measure.
"The combination of strong organic revenue growth and operational gearing, achieved through our indirect sales model, resulted in continued growth in operating margins and bottom line profitability, whilst R&D investment continued apace, up 134% in the year.
Leader
"Throughout 2006 we maintained our position, according to analysts, as 'the clear leader in enterprise search' and firmly established our leadership in meaning based computing, resulting in record demand for our offerings.
"2006 was a transformational year for our markets and Autonomy, with unstructured information reaching 'prime time' status across the globe. Throughout the year leading organizations such as Bloomberg, HP and GSK have made the decision to standardize on Autonomy for the automated handling of unstructured information, recognizing the limitations of manual legacy keyword-based solutions.
"We are looking forward to 2007 with great excitement and continued confidence in our long-term outlook."
The Cambridge-headquartered company that grew out of work at the University of Cambridge. Its success has been built on its award winning technology which combines traditional keyword and Boolean based methods with advanced concept-understanding technologies.
R&D is its largest department, employing over 100 highly qualified specialists. It holds more than 60 patents for its ground-breaking work.
Q4
The company said that during the fourth quarter of 2006 it extended its market leadership with the introduction of new and upgraded technologies. It launched the next generation of enterprise search, with the introduction of Intelligent Ant technology, the latest enhancement to the company's leading edge infrastructure platform.
By complementing traditional spidering techniques with Intelligent Ant technology, Autonomy significantly enhances the quality and relevance of searches within the enterprise, enabling customers to receive real-time results from business applications and from dynamic data sources.
Autonomy also announced significant advancement of its Chinese consumer internet venture. It's Chinese venture has rapidly expanded and established itself as the world's leading Chinese language video search service.
Finally, during Q4 2006 released KeyView Software Development Kits (SDKs) version 10.0, which includes new and enhanced export, viewing and filtering capabilities that allow third-party applications to more effectively manage, evaluate and take action on high-value content.
25th January 2007
