Weakening Euro Impact – Enterprise Software Market Declines in Fourth Quarter 2014

ARC Advisory Group tracks the enterprise software market on a quarterly basis.  We track the revenues of fifteen prominent publicly traded enterprise software companies, translate financial results reported in foreign currencies to US dollars using an average exchange rate for the given reporting period. The suppliers’ reporting period for this analysis is the quarter ended December, 2014 unless stated otherwise.

The suppliers included in this report recorded combined quarterly revenue of $25.1 billion, representing a 0.6 percent year-over-year decline rate. The year-over-year change in supplier revenues ranged from a reduction of 7.9 percent to growth of 21.2 percent. Four suppliers, EMC, IBM, IFS, and SAP reported year-over-year decreases in software or product revenues.  The decline was mainly due to declining euro against dollar value. The euro depreciated relative to the dollar by over 8.2 percent from 4Q2013 to 4Q2014.

The percentage figures mentioned in the research and development (R&D) expense column are a factor of total revenues of the company and not just the enterprise portion of revenues considered for some of the suppliers in the report.

Here is the key chart from the report showing the included suppliers and their growth:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The enterprise software market growth has grown consistently since past few quarters. The chart below shows the quarter over quarter growth of enterprise market since 4Q12.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Currency translations effect played a major role during the quarter. Companies such as SAP and IFS who reported positive y-o-y growth in euro and Swedish krona respectively witnessed negative growth as a result of currency conversion. For the fourth quarter ending December 2014, the Euro depreciated with respect to the dollar by 8.2 percent compared to from 4Q 2013. The chart below shows the performance of Euro vs. dollar since 4Q12.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a quarterly report, timed after all the companies on the list release their revenues. If you would like a complete copy of this analysis, including the results of the fifteen enterprise software companies covered, please contact chanf@arcweb.com.