Jim Goodnight (SAS Institute)
Analytics software giant SAS Institute reported lower revenues in New Zealand during its first pandemic year to 31 December.
Revenue slumped from $30.3 million in what was a bumper 2019 year to $20.1 million while profit before tax also declined from $745,000 to $506,000.
SAS Institute, which is said to be the largest privately-owned software company in the world, expected to struggle globally during the year, with owner Jim Goodnight telling the Wall Street Journal last May the company would not make a profit.
"Financially we are in good shape," he said. "We're not going to have any furloughs or layoffs in response to the pandemic.
"We may not make any money this year but we made plenty in the past to get us by."
However, the company appeared to have surprised on the upside of those predictions, according to more recent reports.
SAS reportedly improved revenues by more than 7 per cent in the first quarter of its 2022 financial year and its annual report, which does not include detailed financials, noted it had also stayed in the black in 2021.
That report put global revenue for the North Carolina-based company at US$3 billion.
Like many software providers SAS is shifting from delivering on-premises software to cloud services and that is visible in the local accounts, with software sales well down from $8.4 million to $1.2 million.
However, service revenue also dipped in 2020, from $21.9 million to $19.8 million, after growing from just $4.2 million in 2017 and $12 million in 2018.
Last June, SAS teamed with Microsoft in both its technology and its go-to-market strategy.
As part of the partnership, the companies were migrating SAS’ analytical products and solutions onto Microsoft Azure as the preferred cloud provider for the SAS Cloud.
The partnership built on SAS integrations across Microsoft cloud solutions for Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform and supported the companies’ "shared vision to further democratise AI and analytics".
