Prepared remarks for the conference call and financial data tables have been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website. The Company will host a management presentation to discuss results at 4:30pm ET on Wednesday July 29, 2015. To access the live webcast, please visit PTC’s Investor Relations website at investor.ptc.com at least 15 minutes before the scheduled start time to download any necessary audio or plug-in software. To participate in the live conference call, dial 8008575592 or 7737993757 and provide the passcode PTC. The call will be recorded and a replay will available for 10 days following the call by dialing 8664892845 and entering the pass code 1205. The archived webcast will also be available on PTC’s Investor Relations website.
Bookings Metric
We offer both perpetual and subscription licensing options to our customers. Given the difference in revenue recognition between the sale of a perpetual software license (revenue is recognized at the time of sale) and a subscription (revenue is deferred and recognized ratably over the subscription term), we use bookings for internal planning, forecasting and reporting of new license and cloud services transactions. In order to normalize between perpetual and subscription transactions, we define bookings as either the annualized contract value (ACV) of a new subscription multiplied by a conversion factor of 2 or the perpetual license revenue recognized. We arrived at the conversion factor of 2 by considering a number of variables including pricing, support, length of term, and renewal rates. We define ACV as the total value of a new subscription solutions booking divided by the term of the contract (in days) multiplied by 365, unless the term is less than one year, in which case the contract value equals the ACV. When calculating L&SS bookings for a period, we add the value of the converted subscription solutions booking to our perpetual license revenue recognized for the period.
License Mix-Adjusted Metrics
These metrics assume that all new software and cloud services bookings since the start of FY’14 were perpetual license sales that included support in subsequent periods. The license mix-adjusted amount is calculated by converting the ACV (as defined above) of a new subscription solutions booking in the period to an assumed perpetual license equivalent by multiplying the ACV by a conversion factor of 2 (as defined above), and adding that amount to the perpetual license revenue amounts recognized in that period. Support calculated at 20% of the annual value of the converted amount is added to support revenue in future periods, beginning the quarter after the converted booking is assumed to be recognized. The assumed support revenue is recognized ratably over a 12 month period and is assumed to renew in subsequent years.
Constant Currency Change Metric
Year-over-year changes in revenue on a constant currency basis compare actual reported results converted into U.S. dollars based on the corresponding prior year’s foreign currency exchange rates to reported results for the comparable prior year period.
Important Information About Non-GAAP References
PTC provides non-GAAP supplemental information to its financial results. Non-GAAP revenue, non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS exclude the effect of purchase accounting on the fair value of acquired deferred revenue, stock-based compensation expense, amortization of acquired intangible assets, restructuring charges, acquisition-related expenses, costs associated with terminating a U.S. pension plan, a litigation accrual of $13.6 million associated with our previously disclosed China investigation, certain identified non-operating gains and losses, the related tax effects of the preceding items, and certain discrete tax items. We use these non-GAAP measures, and we believe that they assist our investors, to make period-to-period comparisons of our operational performance because they provide a view of our operating results without items that are not, in our view, indicative of our core operating results. We believe that these non-GAAP measures help illustrate underlying trends in our business, and we use the measures to establish budgets and operational goals, communicated internally and externally, for managing our business and evaluating our performance. We believe that providing non-GAAP measures affords investors a view of our operating results that may be more easily compared to the results of peer companies. In addition, compensation of our executives is based in part on the performance of our business based on these non-GAAP measures. However, non-GAAP information should not be construed as an alternative to GAAP information as the items excluded from the non-GAAP measures often have a material impact on PTC’s financial results. Management uses, and investors should consider, non-GAAP measures in conjunction with our GAAP results.
PTC also provides information on “free cash flow” and “free cash flow return” to enable investors to assess our ability to generate cash without incurring additional external financings and to evaluate our performance against our announced long-term goal of returning approximately 40% of our free cash flow to shareholders via stock repurchases. Free-cash flow is net cash provided by (used in) operating activities less capital expenditures and free-cash flow return is the value of shares repurchased divided by free cash flow.