(Reuters) -French software maker Dassault Systemes on Thursday forecast a revenue growth of between 8% and 9% in constant currency in 2023 after reporting a resilient fourth quarter, which boosted its shares.
The group, which sells software to automakers, planemakers and industrial firms, guided for an annual revenue of between 5.93 billion euros and 5.98 billion euros ($6.59 billion to $6.53 billion) compared with 5.67 billion euros in 2022.
Including currency fluctuation, the company expects annual growth at around 5%.
The company’s shares, which had lost more than a third of their value last year, were up more than 5% at 0838 GMT.
Citi analysts said the full-year outlook shows resilience.
“Against a backdrop of relatively muted expectations coming into the print, we expect this update will be seen as somewhat reassuring,” it said in a note to clients.
Subscriptions revenue grew 18%, while licence sales showed a 5% increase.
Jefferies analysts qualified it as a good performance in an industry fast shifting to subscriptions model, noting however that it was “hard to know how sustainable this dynamic is over the medium term”.
Dassault Systemes, whose clients include global giants such as Ford, Bosch, Boeing, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Pfizer, reported total revenue of 1.58 billion euros in the fourth quarter, up 10% on the year in constant currency and slightly above analysts’ forecast of 1.57 billion euros.
The result was also at the upper end of the company’s own guidance range of 1.53 billion euros to 1.57 billion euros.
“We delivered very good results for the full year, well in line with our revenue objectives, demonstrating the resiliency of our model,” Chief Financial Officer Rouven Bergmann said.
The group is on track to reach its 2024 earnings per share objective, it said in a statement.
Dassault Systeme’s software sales in China, a big market for licence-based revenue, have lagged, with a mid-single-digit growth in the fourth quarter due to a strict COVID-19 lockdown that was in place in the country.
“The problem has been for us the small and mid-sized businesses which is an important pillar of the economy in China. We can expect that this will all rebound in 2023, but it’s too early to say,” Bergmann told journalists in a call.
($1 = 0.9075 euros)
(Reporting by Dagmarah Mackos and Lina Golovnya; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Christopher Cushing)