Autodesk Chides Street For Faulty Channel Checks

Autodesk (ADSK) is not seeing any impact on its results from the slowdown in the residential housing market, CFO Al Castino said in an interview Thursday afternoon with Tech Trader Daily. Autodesk Thursday reported fiscal second quarter results that were slightly ahead of expectations, and provided guidance that was slightly above the Street consensus for the third quarter and full year.

Castino says “the business is doing really well,” with sales of 3-D design products up 34% year over year, and 2D products up 22%. He says the company saw good growth across all geographies, with particular strength in emerging markets, where sales grew 37%.

Castino notes that, while the company does provide software to the commercial construction business, it has “almost no connection with home construction.” He says its construction segment is seeing healthy business, with “no impact” from the recent slowdown in home sales and the crisis in the mortgage market. He says Autodesk’s business tends to be affected less by any particular economic metric than it is by product cycles and product transitions. Signs Castino: “It’s amazing how few people understand our business.”

Castino made an interesting comment on an apparent conflict between the company’s strong numbers and analysts who conducted “channel checks” which found demand to be weak. Castino thinks the channel checks some of the analysts conduct is flawed; he says they tend to talk to just a handful of the company’s 2,000-plus resellers, and that “weaker resellers who want to grumble are the ones who talk to the analysts.”

He also says that some third-party research firms are apparently paying resellers to provide them with interviews; stronger resellers, he says, are too busy serving customers to participate. Castino says he hadn’t heard of resellers being paid for interviews until the current quarter.

Castino concedes that Autodesk would suffer were the economy to fall into a deep downturn; no surprise there. But he’s not seeing any hints of that kind of downturn at the moment, and contends most of the troubles now afflicting the market are concentrated in financial companies and residential real estate, where Autodesk has no significant presence.

Autodesk shares, which were unchanged in Thursday’s regular session, slipped 60 cents, to $42.01, in after hours trading.

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