A bit more than two years ago, the share of Bertrandt was above EUR 100 and its market cap above EUR 1bn. Investors liked Bertrandt’s annual growth of 10% and its high-single-digit EBIT margin. Today, Bertrandt’s market cap varies between EUR350-400m, and the financial performance continues to deteriorate.
Assystem made a tuck-in acquisition with British risk management firm, Corporate Risk Associates (RCA). As its name suggests, RCA is a risk consultancy that is active across several sectors (including nuclear, oil & gas, defense).
Accenture made a rare acquisition in PLM services for its Industry X.0 unit. The company is to acquire a Torino-headquartered PTC partner, PLM Systems. PLM Systems is a small firm and has 30 consultants
Cyient surprised, negatively, the markets by announcing a decline of 9.7% in its Q4 FY20 revenues (to USD 149m) and an adjusted EBIT margin down 440 bps (to 8.4%).
Without surprise, French ER&D service vendor SII announced a slowdown in its Q4 FY20 (ending March 31): revenues were up 2.2% at CC/CS during the quarter.
Accenture made another acquisition for its Industry X.0 unit. The newly acquired firm is Callisto Integration, an industrial IT specialist that is headquartered in Oakville, Ontario.
Renault is considering R&D outsourcing to save EUR 100-200m annually. The company currently works with approximately 15 ER&D vendors and wants to reduce its number of preferred partners to five.
During the crisis, PSA more than doubled the number of employees WaH from 18,000 concurrent connections to its IT to 38,000.
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The Aerospace Industry’s Outlook Has Changed in Less Than Two Months We now have visibility on
The media have reported numerous examples of volunteers, globally, producing missing equipment, mostly protective masks, for health care professionals exposed to the COVID-19 disease.
Dassault Systems lowered it Q1 2020: the company is now expecting revenue growth in the range of 14%-17%, down from a 20-23% guidance (that includes the acquisition of Medidata). The company has suffered from weaker than expected new license and services revenues. Meanwhile, revenues of Medidata were on a “momentum and license renewals were up too.
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The Stock Market meltdown resulted in an unexpected outcome: Capgemini secured 98.2% of the shares of Altran, with investors rushing to get EUR 14.5 per Altran share. Capgemini will now launch a squeeze-out procedure.
Two vendors, Assystem and Semcon, have put on hold their financial guidance for 2020. This is only the beginning.
Since we published our last note on the impact of Covid-19 on ER&D spending, the situation has changed with Covid-19, having now spread to Europe and soon the US. Already, The European Central Bank is predicting a GDP decline of 5% in 2020, based on the impact of three months of confinement.
Akka has not provided a guidance for 2020. The company expects to suffer in H1, from automotive, aerospace and Covid-19
Despite the stock market melt-down, ER&D vendors have continued to make tuck-in acquisitions in the past two weeks. The acquired firms were of small size and not likely to impact the net debt of their new owners. However, should the Covid-19-China-US trade-war-Stock Markets meltdown-oil price crisis degenerate into a recession, we expect suck tuck-in acquisitions to become scarce.
Akka has launched a mandatory offer for Data Respons (DR) that will provide shareholders the opportunity to sell their DR shares. The company has been active on the stock markets since the end of its tender offer on February 13, raising its stake from 72.9% to 78.1%. Akka is hoping to reach 95% of shares and launch a squeeze-out offer later one.
Karthik Natarajan, the former head of Tech Mahindra’s Integrated Engineering Services (IES), has joined Cyient as COO. We think, the appointment of Mr. Natarajan is a welcome move for Cyient, which has faced growth challenges in the past quarters, resulting from its client concentration and its exposure to Boeing and Pratt & Whitney.
eeva is a Wall Street darling with an eye-popping market cap of $21bn. The uniqueness of Veeva is that its SaaS applications run on top of Salesforce’s Clouds. This approach positions Veeva in the high-growth ecosystem of Salesforce (which grows by 20-25% each year).
The US Federal Reserve yesterday lowered “the target range for the federal funds” by 50 bps to 1%-1.25%. Although the “fundamentals of the US economy remain strong,” “the coronavirus poses evolving risks to economic activity,” communicated the Fed.
Currently, Covid-19 has only affected China significantly, although having spread in South Korea, Japan, and Northern Italy.
Several ER&D vendors have been impacted so far: Ricardo has warned that the situation in the Chinese automotive market would have a “material” effect on its profit.
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Bertrandt had a soft quarter in Q1 FY20 (corresponding to calendar Q4 2019): revenues were flat (+0.4%) to EUR 263m, impacted by project delays, and reduced utilization rates in its Digital Engineering (DE) unit (-3.0%). DE, Bertrandt’s largest unit (55% of revenues), suffered from Germany OEMs shifting their R&D spending to digital.