By 13:00 IST, the scrip of the software company was down by 4.47% at Rs 412.50 on the BSE, slipping from its intra-day high of Rs 434.40. Over 600,000 shares changed hands on the counter. On Monday, the stock ended 9.5% higher at Rs 431.55.

As per market buzz, a domestic mutual fund offloading part of its holding ahead of the company's results.

Geometric Software is scheduled to announce its Q4 results today. According to an analysts poll conducted by capitalmarket.com, for the quarter ended 31 March 2003, the Mumbai-based tech major is expected to post a 8.5% to 49% rise in net profit in the range of Rs 4 crore to Rs 5.5 crore. Sales for the quarter were estimated between Rs 23.25 crore and Rs 23.9 crore, a growth of 27% to 31%.

On quarter-on-quarter basis, the sales growth is projected somewhere between 6% to 9%. Net profit growth has been estimated somewhere between negative 14% to positive 18%.

Meanwhile, for the third quarter ended 31 December 2002, the company registered a 25% rise in net profit to Rs 4.66 crore as compared to Rs 3.73 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Net sales increased by 31.3% to Rs 21.94 crore from Rs 16.71 crore in DQ 2001.

Geometric Software has maintained consolidated profit before tax guidance at around Rs 20 crore for FY 2002-03, which is 48% higher than the previous financial year's performance. However, it scaled down the revenue guidance for FY 2002-03. According to the new guidance, year-on-year revenue growth will be between 34 and 39% (Rs 84 – Rs 87 crore) as against 40% given in the September 2002 quarter.

Geometric Software operates in niche technologies in the $6-billion CAD/CAM/CEA market, which is growing at about 11-12% annually. The major user industries of CAD/CAM/CEA are automobiles, aerospace, heavy equipment and electronics. The company offers expertise in solid and surface modeling, feature recognition, data exchange, ACIS, Parasolid and DesignBase kernels, PDM, nesting and machining.

The company carried out a restructuring of its operations last year, which consisted of constituting three strategic business units viz. Geometry, Information Management and Collaborative Engineering.

As on 31 December 2002, promoters held 33.70% stake in Geometric Software. The public, local institutions and foreign institutions held 37.49%, 3.95% and 10.57% respectively.

BSE code: 500376