News

AUTONOMY CORPORATION ANNOUNCES RECORD THIRD QUARTER 2000 RESULTS

Quarterly Revenues and Gross Profits Increase 191% and 242%, Respectively, Versus 3Q99

Gross Margins Increase to 95%

Third Quarter EPS Improves to $0.05 per share

Autonomy's third quarter conference call will be available live on the World Wide Web at http://www.autonomy.com/ at 3:00PM GMT/10:00AM EST/7:00 AM PST.

SAN FRANCISCO, California and CAMBRIDGE, England - November 15, 2000 - Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU., NASDAQ: AUTN, EASDAQ: AUTN), a global leader in infrastructure software for the Web and the enterprise, today reported record financial results for the third fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2000.

KEY FEATURES

	Three Months Ended			Nine Months Ended
	Sept. 30,	June 30,	Sept. 30,	Sept. 30,	Sept. 30,
Results in USD	2000	2000	1999	2000	1999
($000's except per share)
Revenue	$17,635	$14,624	$6,055	$43,961	$14,785
Gross Profit	16,724	13,226	4,886	40,876	12,578
Gross Profit Margin	95%	90%	81%	93%	85%
Net Income (loss)	$6,532	$3,385	$(2,533)	$10,263	$(3,472)
Earnings (loss) per share*
basic	$0.05	$0.03	$(0.02)	$0.08	$(0.03)
diluted	$0.05	$0.03	NA	$0.08	NA

* All per share information reflects a 3-for-1 stock split effective as of August 1, 2000.

Significant Corporate Highlights Include:

Business model continues to demonstrate scalability with gross margins remaining high at 95%, up from 81% in Q3 1999 and 90% in Q2 2000
Operating income margin at 26% an increase of 113% from Q2
Continental U.S. revenue growth in excess of 50% from Q2 2000
Indirect channel strategy drives forward with new, high profile OEM & integration relationships, including Evolve, Viador, Documentum and Intershop
Continued growth of blue chip client base, including BP Amoco, Ford Motor Company, France Telecom, KPMG, the World Bank and Zurich Insurance
Company continues Asian expansion with partnerships with NTT Software and iXL
Initial revenues from OEM relationships begin to flow in Q3 2000
Autonomy successfully completes a listing on The London Stock Exchange

Commenting on the results, Autonomy CEO Dr Mike Lynch said: "Our record third quarter was driven by strong growth in the US combined with continuing gains in Europe and Asia. During the quarter, we signed agreements with major blue chip customers world wide including Ford Motor Company, BP Amoco, AstraZeneca, KPMG, France Telecom, Zurich Insurance and the World Bank. We continue to execute on our indirect sales strategy signing agreements with OEMs, integration partners, resellers and ASPs including Evolve, Documentum, NTT Software and Logical. In summary, our third quarter results demonstrate Autonomy's ability to build upon its global leadership position in providing a fundamental infrastructure technology."

"Autonomy continues to aggressively execute on its strategy of providing a platform for automating operations on any form of unstructured data and will do this both organically, such as our planned expansion in Asia, and through selective acquisitions. Finally, we are delighted that on November 3, 2000, Autonomy completed a successful listing on The London Stock Exchange."

Third Quarter Financial Highlights

Revenues for the quarter totaled $17.6 million, up 191% from $6.1 million for the third quarter of 1999 and up 21% from $14.6 million for the second quarter of 2000. US/Asia Pacific revenues totaling $9.2 million were 52% of total third quarter revenues of 2000 and UK/Europe revenues totaling $8.4 million were 48% of total revenues for the quarter.

Gross profits for the quarter were $16.7 million, up 242% from $4.9 million in the third quarter of 1999 and up 26% from $13.2 million in the second quarter of 2000. Third quarter gross margins increased to 95%, compared to 81% in the third quarter of 1999, and compared to 90% in the second quarter of 2000.

Net income for the third quarter 2000 was $6.5 million, or $0.05 per share, compared to net loss of $2.5 million, or $0.02 per share, for the third quarter of 1999, and compared to net income of $3.4 million, or $0.03 per share, for the second quarter of 2000. The proforma tax affected net income excluding the effects of foreign exchange gains and UK National Insurance benefit, was $4.4 million, or $0.04 per share for third quarter 2000.

Cash and cash equivalents totaled $133.3 million at September 30, 2000, compared to a balance of $127.8 million at June 30, 2000. The increase in cash and cash equivalents was primarily due to $3.5 million cash flow from operations including foreign exchange gains and $2.2 million from exercise of options to purchase ordinary shares, partially offset by $0.2 million in equipment purchases.

Accounts receivable days sales outstanding decreased to 60 days averaged for the third quarter of 2000, compared to 80 days averaged for the second quarter of 2000.

Sales

During the quarter, Autonomy was successful in expanding its leadership position in providing infrastructure technology directly to enterprises, new media and e-commerce companies worldwide. Autonomy's sales operations are located in 21 cities worldwide, with full service offices located throughout North America and Europe. In addition, the company has offices in Australia, with expansion across Asia a priority.

Enterprise Wins

Autonomy's key products, which include Portal-in-a-Box™ and Active Knowledge, have been adopted by enterprises to automatically aggregate, categorize, personalize and deliver information across all internal and external data sources. As a result, employees have access to more timely, relevant information, whether working on their desktop or out in the field utilizing a mobile phone or other handheld device.

During the quarter, Autonomy signed agreements with leading enterprises serving a broad range of industries including pharmaceutical, semiconductor, energy, consumer products, information storage, telecommunications, accounting, technology, banking and finance and education. Major contract wins include: AMR Research, Ford Motor Company, BP Amoco, AstraZeneca, France Telecom, Zurich Insurance and the World Bank. In addition, Autonomy generated additional license revenues from existing clients, including Hewlett Packard, Ericsson, Lucent and Nomura.

New Media Wins

A key challenge with new media and e-commerce companies is managing the large volumes of unstructured information on-line. Through Autonomy's new media and e-commerce products, companies are able to categorize, organize and provide users with relevant content and products. Moreover, by utilizing Autonomy's technology, these firms are able to provide a higher quality on-line experience at significantly reduced costs.

Autonomy continued to grow its group of new media, e-commerce and other Internet facing clients during the quarter, signing agreements with leading companies, including HSBC, Firstgov, BSkyB, Moreover, DooYoo.com, Dennis and Mybau.com.

Strategic Partnerships and OEMs

Autonomy licenses its technology into a wide range of products offered by third party OEMs and strategic partners. License agreements are typically non-exclusive for end user markets and generally include a one-time license fee plus royalties based on sales of the OEM's products. Through the company's OEM and strategic partnerships, Autonomy has been successful in strengthening its position in establishing itself as the platform for automatically managing unstructured information. Key integration partnerships signed during the quarter included Documentum, Intershop and Viador. New strategic reseller agreements also included iXL, NTT Software, Integic, Litton/TASC, GTSI and GRC. New OEM and ASP relationships included Evolve, ComputerAid Services and Logical. During the quarter, the company also began receiving royalties from OEM partners signed in previous quarters.

Acquisition

Autonomy continued its international expansion, capitalizing on the language independence of its technology, by consolidating its Scandinavian subsidiary into the larger Autonomy group in October 2000. Autonomy previously held a minority stake in the equity and acquired the remaining majority equity in exchange for Autonomy's ordinary shares. As a part of this acquisition, Autonomy acquired the established management team, a technical development team with specific strengths in the wireless field as well as sales and marketing operations across Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark with strategic relationships with partners, such as Adcore, Avenir, Merkantildata and ECsoft. Existing clients across Scandinavia include Skanska, Telia, Dagens Naeringsliv and Danske Bank.

Corporate Developments

On October 30, 2000, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, CSFB and HSBC completed a secondary offering of Autonomy's shares on The London Stock Exchange on behalf of selling shareholders. First dealings began on November 3, 2000. A total of 7,650,000 ordinary shares, including the fully exercised over-allotment option, was placed with institutions at a price of £32.76 per ordinary share and $47.50 per ADS resulting in a total offering size of $363 million. Autonomy is expected to be considered for inclusion in the FTSE-100 Index on December 6, 2000.

In the second quarter, Autonomy won a significant customer in the Far East, Tom.com, one of the world's largest Chinese language portals. Since then, the company has been focused on building an indirect channel to market in the Far East to take advantage of the opportunity that Autonomy's language-independent technology creates. This has met with initial success with the signing of NTT Software as a reseller of Autonomy's products. Other relationships this quarter have been signed with Hansol in Korea, LeadingSide and Compaq in Singapore, KPMG in New Zealand and Ricoh in Hong Kong.

Strengthened Management Team

Autonomy continues to strengthen its key management team with the recent addition of Andrew Kanter as vice president, international operations and legal affairs and Dag Roensen as managing director of Autonomy Nordic. Mr. Kanter joined Autonomy in August 2000. Prior to joining Autonomy, Mr. Kanter, was an associate attorney with Brobeck Hale and Dorr in London, one of Europe's leading technology law firms, and Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison in San Francisco, primarily engaged in international mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance. Mr. Kanter holds a juris doctor from the University of Southern California Law Center and a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and also studied at Kansai University of Foreign Studies, Osaka, Japan.

Mr. Roensen joined the Autonomy group in October 2000, after running Autonomy Nordic AS for three years prior to the acquisition. Prior to joining Autonomy Nordic, Mr. Roensen was vice president of Microsoft in Norway. His experience building Microsoft's Nordic territories will prove invaluable as Autonomy builds its Nordic operations. Mr. Roensen holds a B.A. from the University of Washington and also studied marketing at Insead in France.

Safe Harbor/Forward-looking Statements

Note:

With the exception of historical information, the matters set forth in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include, among others, technology risks, including dependence on core technology; fluctuations in quarterly results; dependence on new product development; rapid technological and market change; reliance on sales by others; management of growth; dependence on key personnel; rapid expansion; growth of the Internet; financial risk management; and future growth subject to risks. These factors and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are also discussed in the company's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including Autonomy's Registration Statements on Form F-1.

For the complete annnouncement please download the Acrobat PDF file from here.

Financial Media Contacts:	Analyst and Investor Contacts:
Dominic Johnson, Chief Marketing Officer Autonomy Corporation plc 415-243-9955 Ann Travers Brainerd Communicators, Inc. 212-986-6667 917-687-6263 (mobile) Edward Bridges/Alastair Hetherington Financial Dynamics (44) 020 7831 3113	Ralph Harms, Chief Financial Officer Autonomy Corporation plc 415-243-9955 John Buckley Brainerd Communicators, Inc. 212-986-6667 917-543-3622 (mobile)