More WCM financials: Day and SDL Tridion

We have more year-end financials available this week so we can continue our look at the  health of the WCM market.

Day Software, which is traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange and OTC in the US, released its year-end results today, with total 2008 revenues of CHF 27.8M ($23.9m USD), an increase of 11% from 2007. License revenue grew 8%.  Day continued with a net loss on a GAAP basis, though it had a number of restructuring charges and claimed a return to non-GAAP profitability, when these charges are excluded.  Day released a major upgrade to its flagship CQ5 in Q4, which I would have expected to delay Q4 sales as customers wait for the new version.  So that fact combined with the overall business climate make modest growth from Day unsurprising.

We also get a bit of data from SDL on its acquired Tridion business.  SDL’s year-end results include the note that it had “Tridion revenue growth of 16%.”  Based on data we’ve tracked since SDL acquired Tridion in 2007, we had Tridion bringing in $42m in 2007 revenue, so 16% growth puts 2008 at $48.7m  Growth has definitely slowed for Tridion, which reported 58% growth in 2007 over 2006, but we already knew that since SDL noted Tridion’s first-half 2008 sales grew only 11%.

To me this all seems to point to relatively stable growth in WCM overall.  If we average in the outliers (FatWire/Sitecore and Vignette on the high and low ends respectively), we probably get to low double-digit growth in the 10-20% range, which is pretty much what the sector has been seeing for awhile now.

What about 2009?  Growth may well slow some, but I still don’t see the WCM sector getting hitting particularly hard, as there is still a lot of work to be done on a lot of sites in nearly all verticals and geos.  There may be more opportunities for open source and SaaS players to make some hay with potential cost savings, along with some projects getting delayed, downsized or chunked up, but I see organizations still buying WCM overall.

A related note:  Our recent report on M&A prospects in WCM is available via the New York Times DealBook today.