The company, which specialises in 3-D and other modelling software, had already spooked investors last October by warning that sales growth would not meet its forecasts.

Its shares plunged 18 percent on the Paris stock exchange Wednesday, and have now lost 54 percent of their value over the past year.

Sales rose just 1 percent on like-for-like comparisons in the fourth quarter to 1.7 billion euros ($2 billion), the bottom of Dassault's own guidance of 1-8 percent growth.

And the company, which says it is pushing to deploy AI capabilities across its product lines, said revenue should rise three to five percent this year, whereas most analysts had pencilled in around six percent.

"As customers embrace new business models, we expect subscription revenue to accelerate," chief financial officer Rouven Bergmann said in a statement.

However, "this transformation takes time", he said.

Analysts focussed on a new metric, Annual Run Rate, aimed at showing the recurring revenues from cloud and subscription clients, which rose six percent in the fourth quarter to 4.5 billion euros.

"In a software industry that has been accelerating to subscription/recurring revenues, this is likely to be seen as underwhelming," analysts at Jefferies said in a research note.

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Dassault Systèmes