“The RedEye paid parts business grew by 36% during the fourth quarter driven by increased demand for DDM applications. The RedEye team was excited to announce in December a major collaboration with Autodesk, a two-billion dollar world leader in digital design technologies, which allows AutoCAD software users to order digitally manufactured parts quickly and easily through a new on-demand 3D printing feature. We are pleased that companies like Autodesk are increasingly recognizing the value of incorporating additive fabrication technologies into the design process.
“Consumable revenue was flat during the fourth quarter, a function of the inconsistent buying patterns of our resellers, combined with a likely negative impact from the slowing economy. We are projecting a more positive growth trajectory for consumable revenue during 2009, given our expectation of a significant expansion in our installed base of systems. We should note that maintenance revenue, another recurring revenue component of our business, increased by 20% during the quarter.
“Fiscal 2008 represented another record revenue and operating profit year for Stratasys despite the challenging economic environment. We introduced 5 new products throughout the year, and reached a major milestone upon installing our 10,000th system since our company’s inception. We grew our proprietary products and services by 15% and completed development projects that will provide for future growth.
“We have positive momentum within our Fortus 3D production systems and RedEye paid parts businesses, driven by new products and emerging DDM applications. We are excited about our 3D printer initiatives, most notably the Dimension uPrint, the world’s first personal 3D printer that we successfully introduced in January of this year. uPrint represents a major step within our longer-term strategy of moving down the price elasticity curve and accelerating the adoption of 3D printers among designers and engineers. We believe uPrint will generate significant growth in our unit volume during 2009, which bodes well for future consumable revenue.
“We remain committed to our long-term goal of providing products and services that help our customers reduce costs and accelerate their new products to market. Although we are feeling the impact of an unprecedented slowdown in manufacturing worldwide, our financial position is strong, we are solidly profitable, and we maintain a flexible business model built around significant recurring revenue components that generate strong contribution margins,” Crump concluded.
Due to the difficulty of forecasting in the current economic environment, Stratasys is currently not providing financial guidance for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2009.
Appropriate reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are provided in a table at the end of this press release.
The Company will hold a conference call to discuss its fourth quarter and full year financial results on Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 8:30 a.m. (ET). The investor conference call will be available via live webcast on the Stratasys web site at www.stratasys.com under the "Investors" tab. To participate by telephone, the domestic dial-in number is 888-679-8040, and the international dial-in is 617-213-4851. The access code is 35256869. Investors are advised to dial into the call at least ten minutes prior to the call to register.
Participants may pre-register for the call at www.theconferencingservice.com/prereg/key.process?key=PF3XTQE4A.
Pre-registrants will be issued a pin number to use when dialing into the live call which will provide quick access to the conference by bypassing the operator upon connection.
The webcast will be available for 90 days on the "Investors" page of the Stratasys website.
(Financial tables follow)
Stratasys, Inc., Minneapolis, manufactures additive fabrication machines for prototyping and manufacturing plastic parts. The company also operates a service for part prototyping and production. According to Wohlers Report 2008, Stratasys supplied 44 percent of all additive fabrication systems installed worldwide in 2007, making it the unit market leader for the sixth consecutive year. Stratasys patented and owns the process known as FDM.® The process creates functional prototypes and manufactured goods directly from any 3D CAD program, using high-performance industrial thermoplastics. The company holds more than 180 granted or pending additive fabrication patents globally. Stratasys products are used in the aerospace, defense, automotive, medical, business and industrial equipment, education, architecture, and consumer-product industries. On the Web: www.Stratasys.com; Dimensionprinting.com; or RedEyeOnDemand.com.
Forward Looking Statements
All statements herein that are not historical facts or that include
such words as “expects”, “anticipates”, “projects”, “estimates”,
“vision”, “planning” or “believes” or similar words constitute
forward-looking statements covered by the safe harbor protection of the
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Except for the
historical information herein, the matters discussed in this news
release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and
uncertainties. These include statements regarding projected
revenue and income in future quarters; the size of the 3D printing
market; our objectives for the marketing and sale of our DimensionTM
3D printers and our FortusTM 3D production
systems, particularly for use in direct digital manufacturing (DDM); the
demand for our proprietary consumables; the expansion of our paid parts
service; and our beliefs with respect to the growth in the demand for
our products. Other risks and uncertainties that may affect our
business include our ability to penetrate the 3D printing market; our
ability to maintain the growth rates experienced in this and preceding
quarters; our ability to introduce, produce and market new materials,
such as ABS-Plus and ABS-M30, and the market acceptance of these and
other materials; the impact of competitive products and pricing; our
timely development of new products and materials and market acceptance
of those products and materials; the success of our recent R&D
initiative to expand the DDM capabilities of our core FDM technology;
and the success of our RedEyeOnDemand <
