Dassault Systèmes SE (OTC:DASTY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So, we always have, I would say, an uplift of 1 to 2 points of growth potentially per year from price adjustments. And this, of course, can vary across our customers because we have €“ a customer who’s on maintenance, they renew their maintenance contract, which has an inflation uplift included. So, it’s a combination of many topics. Now, to the margin and the cloud impact on the subscription. I mentioned this, the subscription today is already 1.5 billion. And it is 1.5x of the license revenue. So, it’s already reflected significantly in our P&L and in our cash flow model. And the cloud of this is 1 billion. So, our objective is to get from 1 billion to 2 billion. The cash flow was, in 2022, not impacted from the accelerated growth of cloud and subscription.

The reason of the delay and the timing effect we had, had nothing to do with the accelerated growth in cloud. And it is hypothetical to compare this if everything would be upfront. This is not the case. So, I do not expect from our plan to get from 1 billion to 2 billion in cloud and accelerated growth in subscription that there will be an impact on our cash flow model, right, as we have it in place. And again, 2022 was impacted by some unfavorable timing effects. The one-time cash tax payment for the U.S. taxes that we had to account for, which was a one-time impact. And in 2023, we will see, you know as a counter to that, the benefit of that in the comparison. So, we expect good cash flow growth in 2023 to summarize that.

Nicolas David: Yes, that’s really clear. Thank you very much.

Bernard Charles: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Now, we’re going to take our next question, and the question comes from the line of Jay Vleeschhouwer from Griffin Securities. Your line is open. Please ask the question.

Jay Vleeschhouwer: Thank you. Hello everyone. Bernard, let me start with you. In the press release and in the slide deck, you referred to your multi-scale strategy and capabilities. And this, to me, for the last number of years has been an implicitly interesting potential for DS to distinguish itself, but some of the examples we’ve had of your doing so over the last couple of years, it seemed somewhat anecdotal. So, perhaps you could speak about what the strategy is to manifest that multi-scale capability or capabilities in your product road map and how you see that capability manifesting itself in terms of go-to-market and/or your services, investments, and requirements. And then after that, I just have a couple of follow-ups for Pascal and Rouven.

Bernard Charles: Hello Jay. I think today, the reality is when we sell SIMULIA solutions. In most of the case, it’s multi-discipline, at least depending at least two or three disciplines like stressed thermal or thermal on electromagnetic. Most of the case, it’s less on less sales with one type of discipline. So that’s for the multi-disciplined approach. And I think the more €“ this is especially the case for people having €“ customers having adopted the platform itself. On the multi-scale aspect, it depends about the nature of what customers are doing, of course, but for example, you might be aware that we do a lot in Life Sciences & Healthcare for simulation of airflows, battery, and the level of battery, it goes at the cell level or at the crash test level or structure level.