SDL plc Q1 Interim Management Statement

SDL plc (“SDL”: LSE: SDL), a leader in Customer Experience Management solutions, today publishes its Interim Management Statement incorporating the period from 1 January 2013 to 31 March 2013, as required by the UK’s Listing Authority disclosure rules.

Whilst the performance for the first quarter of 2013 was slightly behind management expectations, given the previously announced investments, the Board remains confident for the outlook for the current financial year.

The Technology segment’s revenue performance in the first quarter of 2013 was broadly flat on the first quarter last year and slightly behind management expectations. Licence bookings in Content Management Technologies and Machine Translation were in line with management expectations, and bookings in Campaign Management, Analytics and Social Intelligence were behind expectations. As previously indicated, the planned marketing and sales investments announced in November 2012 and in our preliminary results for 2012, has had the expected short term impact on the profitability of this division. New contract wins in the period include Info.com, Elekta, Tokyo Electron and GTA, part of Kuoni Global Travel Services.

Language Services revenue in the first quarter of 2013 was marginally ahead of the first quarter last year and we are pleased with this performance given that Q1 2012 was a very strong quarter for the Language Services segment. We see continued growth momentum in the business. However, profit is down on Q1 2012 due to a combination of pricing pressure and investment in the transition to automated translation and is therefore performing slightly behind management expectations at this stage. New contract wins in the period include Edwards Lifesciences, Rolls Royce and Premier Farnell.

As planned, we have recently hired a Chief Marketing Officer. In addition, SDL’s previously announced marketing and sales investment plans remain on track. This is crucial to build our pipeline and bookings for the remainder of this year and beyond.

SDL continues to lead in Web Content Management technology, and more importantly has emerged the leader in Customer Experience Management, according to the recent Forrester Wave TM. We have recently launched our new Social Intelligence platform, and remain on track, with other product launches, to cement our leadership in Customer Experience Management.

Commenting on the IMS, Mark Lancaster said today:

“We remain confident in the need for Customer Experience Management technology in the market place and believe our suite of products and services addresses the challenges of engagement in the new digital world. We are making very good progress with our investment in sales and marketing, the returns from which we expect to start seeing in the form of bookings in the second half of the financial year.