What a day--. That earnings report was straight out of the Friday the 13th series. For any who are still interested in the company, the conference call is at 1-888-568-0906.
Here are two good summaries of the conference call from the Yahoo! board:
messages.yahoo.com
messages.yahoo.com
Here are some additional pieces of information and points of emphasis:
(1) CEO Steve Singh named three new Concur Procurement customers who signed on this quarter: U.S. West, Northern States Power, and Pivotal Corp. These are in addition to an existing roster of Procurement customers that includes SBC, Allied Signal (now part of Honeywell), and Hertz.
(2) New customers for the licensed version of eWorkplace included Honeywell, Lexmark, Dow Jones, and Equistar. CNQR added 12 eWorkplace customers this quarter.
(3) Singh said several times that he is "happy with the pipeline" for the licensed version of eWorkplace -- which presumably means they are continuing to sign new customers.
(4) Customers using the licensed version of eWorkplace will automatically be connected to the Concur Commerce Network when they upgrade to Release 6.0, which is due out in the middle of this calendar year.
(5) Singh said that the company is enjoying some success in getting its Concur Expense clients to purchase other apps in the eWorkplace suite. (He provided no details.)
(6) CNQR recognized no licensing revenues from eWorkplace ASP during the December quarter. The company did recognize some nominal setup and initiation fees; but, I repeat, it did not recognize licensing fees. This is because the ASP product rolled out in December, so clients couldn't get in their first full month of usage until at least January.
(7) There are currently 60 eWorkplace ASP customers. Of these, 12 companies have 1,000 or more employees.
(8) Some important advantages of the ASP model: it will create a more stable and visible revenue stream for the company, as clients will be billed monthly for use of the system (fees $2-12 per user per application per month, with an average of about $6-7); the implementation process is much shorter than with the licensed version of eWorkplace; ASP clients are immediately connected to the Concur Commerce Network, meaning users can generate additional network and distribution revenues, on top of the monthly licensing fee noted above; over the long run (past the 24-month mark, on average), ASP clients will generate greater revenues than will users of the licensed eWorkplace, due to the recurring nature of ASP billings.
(9) The company reiterated its October guidance by saying that revenues for FY2000 would increase 40-45 percent over FY1999. (They said this despite the small year-over-year revenue growth for the first quarter. This reflects their confidence in the burgeoning ASP market, I believe.)
(10) Singh said he does not expect the partnership with Nortel to ramp until the middle of calendar 2000. The company is currently working with Nortel to train sales, marketing, and support personnel.
(11) Gross margins for services are expected to turn positive toward the end of FY2000. Services has been a consistent money loser for CNQR, historically. |
