Organic growth drives Autonomy’s 3Q09 results to new levels
Software firm Autonomy Corporation plc reported third-quarter to end September net profit rose to $36.8m from $33.4m, while sales rose 51% to $191.6m from $127.1 million last year.
CEO Mike Lynch said: "We delivered strong growth despite the usual seasonality and challenging comparatives. These results give us confidence in maintaining our view of the full year."
Profit before tax reached a record $64.3m up 20% from $53.7m in the September 08 quarter.
The Cambridge-HQed company's share price slid 4% on the news, after recently scaling year highs. It is currently valued at around £3.6 billion, making it comfortably the most valuable publicly listed company with its home and roots in Silicon Fen.
Dr Lynch said the firm was "very busy in the quarter preparing for 2010.
"We successfully launched IDOL SPE, which was very positively received by the industry, and generated a stronger than expected demand on our Quick Start program.
"We have also invested in our data centre capacity to allow future growth in the Meaning Based Marketing (MBM) side of the business, which has already begun to show good traction.
"During the quarter we saw some of our large customers promote Autonomy to strategic supplier status. This has led them to adopt a broader set of our solutions in a number of significant deals."
He said cash generation of the business since the beginning of the year had been so strong that its cash balance already covers the remaining part of the debt it took out six months ago to fund the Interwoven acquisition.
"We feel that should an upturn start to materialise we are extremely well positioned to accelerate our growth."
