@Jimmy_CThank you very much. That makes good sense. Yes maintenance revenues have proven very stable with good growth, and remarkably, right through the mining capex meltdown. However, I must say that this revenue looks too stable to be of an ad hoc nature, as you describe.
Below are 'maintenance' revenues, for 6 month periods, for periods ending Dec 2014 through to Dec 2020.
H1 FY15: $6.9m
H2 FY15: $6.8m
H1 FY16: $7.8m
H2 FY16: $7.2m
H1 FY17: $8.5m
H2 FY17: $9.0m
H1 FY18: $9.6m
H2 FY18: $10.0m
H1 FY19: $10.9m
H2 FY19: $10.9m
H1 FY20: $10.9m
Two things stick out here (for me). First, the remarkable stability. It is for this reasons that I was suspecting that the 'maintenance' revenue involved some kind of contracted period of service (which would also be consistent with it having at various points being referred to as 'recurring revenue').
The second observation I would make is that in the latest periods there has been no growth in 'maintenance' revenue (for 3 straight HY periods). This 'no growth' period coincides very well with the uptake of the subscription offering, and with the decline in 'perpetual' licence sales. It is for this reason that I was suspecting that the 'maintenance' stream was linked to the perpetual offering, and that as such, the new subscription model comprised
both maintenance and product access - at least to a degree.
(20min delay)