ICEM Celebrates First Full Year As Independent Software Company

ICEM Celebrates First Full Year As Independent Software Company With Sales Growth Of Up To 47% A Quarter Compared With Year Before. Highlights include new release of flagship software, ICEM Surf V4.3; major new customer wins; fast-growing user base.

Southampton, UK, (PRWEB) September 6, 2003 -- ICEM Ltd., a leading surface modeling, analysis and visualization software developer, announced today that at the end of its first full year as an independent company, it has seen sales of its ICEM Surf software suite increase by up to 47% per quarter in comparison with the same quarters one year ago.

Results for the companys fiscal year, ending December 31, 2003, are not due until early in 2004. However, Lee Cureton, chief executive, ICEM Ltd., was able to announce figures for the twelve months since the company became independent following the management buy-out (MBO) from its previous owners, PTC, Inc., at the end of August 2002.

I am very pleased with the progress we have made in our first year of operation as an independent company," said Cureton. We have achieved and in many cases exceeded the ambitious targets we set, while the response we have received from our customers has been extremely encouraging."

Goals met or exceeded.
Cureton emphasized that although much of the first three months after completion of the MBO was spent recruiting key staff, getting the new business up and running and finding and moving into the companys new headquarters, sales performance improved quarter by quarter compared with the previous year and product developments that were already in train came to market as planned.

In terms of software licenses, the new company achieved in its first nine months of operation what had taken a full twelve months to achieve in the year before its independence. ICEM Surf license sales were up an average 42% quarter-on-quarter from calendar Q4 02 to calendar Q2 03, with growth in the three months from January to March '03 -- the first quarter following the companys public launch -- at 47% above the same quarter in 2002.

During the course of its first year the company also added Nissan Motor Corporation in Japan as a major new customer and greatly expanded its software 'seat count in existing European customers, such as PSA Peugeot Citroën. In the USA the company added jet-ski and snowmobile manufacturer Polaris to its customer list and won new commitments from existing customers such as Ford Motor Company and Lear Corporation.

The success that we have enjoyed in this first year has come about because we have been focused," said Cureton. We have focused on putting an effective marketing program in place and on re-organizing and directing our sales force and distribution network towards achieving our strategic goals. Equally importantly though, we focused on communicating our business and product development plans to our customers. That was key."

Part of this focus in the first year has been on improving and expanding the companys distribution and support network.

In addition to maintaining ICEM sales and support offices in the USA and the major European countries, the company has appointed a number of additional specialist distributors to cater for growing demand in countries such as China, Taiwan, India and other areas of the Far East and the Indian subcontinent. The ICEM distribution and support channel is also being expanded in areas such as Scandinavia, the Middle East and South America.

Evidence of the importance of this aspect of the companys plans is that, during the first year, the distributor network accounted for some 30% of overall sales, compared with around 5% before ICEM became independent.

Product developments.
Among the new product developments that were released to the market as planned during the companys first year of independence were ICEM Surf Version 4.3, ICEM Viewer and advanced new visualization tools. Further major new product developments are scheduled for release later this year and in the first quarter of next.

An important enabler here is an expansion of the companys existing, highly skilled software research and development team in Germany through the recent addition of a team of specialist software engineers experienced in developing automotive design applications. This has enabled the company to 'fast-track certain planned product developments.

Among these future product releases are the next generation of the companys flagship software, ICEM Surf. Scheduled for release later this year, ICEM Surf Version 4.4 will see the software move to an object-oriented database architecture designed to provide users with a seamless transition to an intelligent surface modeling environment that protects their existing investments at the same time as providing enhanced modeling and data sharing capabilities.

Other developments scheduled for later this year include greatly enhanced facilities for the integration and sharing of surface model data with solid modeling-based CAD/CAM systems and with companies installed product lifecycle management (PLM) systems.

Meanwhile, the companys new software suite for use in the front-end styling and concept design phase of an automotive or product development program is on schedule for its planned launch in March, 2004.

Our overall product development philosophy and direction is towards providing more advanced ICEM facilities that fully support and enhance a customers established work-flow processes, within a PLM systems environment," explained Cureton. Increasingly over the coming few months, we will be announcing new developments that demonstrate that philosophy."

Looking to the future.
In looking further ahead some two to three years from now, Cureton is confident of seeing ICEM growing organically some 200 -- 300% on the companys first-year performance.

Much of this anticipated growth is expected to come from new application areas, including software developments that enable ICEM to more readily address some of the downstream vehicle body engineering issues. For example, new, smart software tools could enable customers to use ICEM surface model data at the originated structural block of a new vehicle or at the CAE modeling stage.

However, apart from new application areas within the vehicle and product development work-flow, the company expects to see growth coming from the fact that, while it develops best-of-breed software that addresses a specific aspect of the design process, that software will increasingly be seen by customers as a key element of the overall development process that fully integrates with their existing detailed engineering and PLM systems.

Meanwhile on the technology front, during the course of the next year or so the company will also have started work on how and in which direction its surface modeling and visualization software developments should move in order to satisfy users future needs in terms of working with virtual models, perhaps using emerging technologies such as holography.

Based on our experiences and success over this past first year and by continuing to concentrate on developing and providing the automotive vehicle and product design and development industry with the tools it needs to do its job effectively and efficiently, I am confident that ICEM will continue to grow in the foreseeable future and to out-perform our competitors as well as the marketplace in general, Cureton concluded.

About ICEM Ltd.
With its headquarters in the UK, ICEM Ltd. is the leading worldwide developer and supplier of advanced, surface-based modeling software for use in the design and development of automotive vehicle bodies and interiors and consumer durable products. The company has a worldwide network of sales and support offices and specialist distributors covering continental Europe, the USA, Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

ICEMs principal market sector is the worldwide automotive industry, where it includes most of the leading manufacturers among its customers, including the Ford Motor Company, DaimlerChrysler Group, Volkswagen Audi Group, Porsche, BMW, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Nissan, Subaru and Harley Davidson among others, as well as leading automotive industry companies such as Volke, EDAG, Pininfarina, Bertone and Bertrandt, among many others. The company also has a significant presence in the consumer durable products design market.

Company Contacts:
Kate Mills
+44 (0)2380 768088
kate.mills@icem.com

Neil McLeod
+44 (0)1666 504293
neil_mcleod@compuserve.com

US Contacts:
Ken Feitz
Strategic Reach PR
303 487 7406
ken@strategicreachpr.com

ENDS