DASSAULT SYSTEMESREPORTS 23% INCREASE IN FIRST QUARTER REVENUE; PDM REVENUE UP 75%

2001 First Quarter Revenue Totals Euro 165.1 Million, Up From Euro 134.7 Million In Year-ago Quarter

2001 First Quarter EPS Euro 0.25

Paris, France, April 24, 2001 -- Dassault Systemes (DS) (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a worldwide leading software developer of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions, today announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2001.

Acquisition costs include goodwill and technology amortization and other related acquisition costs. All financial figures in this press release are before these acquisition costs unless otherwise noted.

FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Total revenue increased 23% to Euro 165.1 million in the first quarter of 2001, up from Euro 134.7 million in the first quarter of 2000. Software license revenue, representing 88% of total revenue in the 2001 first quarter, grew 23% to Euro 144.7 million, up from Euro 117.7 million in the year-ago quarter. Recurring software revenue, which gives the Company good revenue visibility, represented 47% of total software revenue in the 2001 first quarter. Services increased 20% to Euro 20.4 million in the 2001 first quarter, compared to Euro 17.0 million in the comparable 2000 period. 8,078 CATIA and 5,824 SolidWorks seats were licensed in the first quarter of 2001.

While first quarter 2001 total revenue increased 23% year-over-year, net income was level with the year-ago quarter, reflecting accelerated investments in R&D and marketing and sales as well as currency fluctuations. Specifically, research and development increased 27%, with marketing and sales up 51%. Net income totalled Euro 29.9 million or Euro 0.25 per diluted share in the 2001 first quarter, compared to the 2000 first quarter where net income totalled Euro 29.5 million or Euro 0.25 per diluted share.

Charles Edelstenne, Chairman of DS, commented, “DS' first quarter was marked by solid revenue growth and significant investments in our future. I believe DS is well-positioned due to the strategic importance of our products and solutions to companies throughout the world.”

Thibault de Tersant, Executive Vice President, commented, “DS’ 23% increase in revenue this quarter was a result of good execution across our brands and in all geographic regions. Excluding PDM, Process-centric revenue, led by CATIA, grew 15%. Design-centric revenue with SolidWorks grew 44%. PDM revenue, with ENOVIA and Smart Solutions, was up sharply at 75%. Based upon these results, we are maintaining our objective for total 2001 revenue of approximately Euro 750 million and EPS of Euro 1.33, but we recognize that significant currency fluctuations or further weakening of the economic environment, particularly in Europe, could have a negative impact."

Bernard Charles, President, stated, “DS moves forward in 2001 with an exciting vision to drive our success as demonstrated by our first quarter performance. We are focused on becoming a world leader in PLM and 3D commerce, markets with compelling growth opportunities, by building upon our core strengths. One of our most important core assets is the unique know-how and expertise in 3D technologies that position us to offer the power of 3D visualization in PLM applications as well as extending the power of 3D visualization to a wider community through 3D collaborative commerce. Our addressable market has expanded considerably through the leveraging of our 3D technologies from MCAD to PLM and 3D commerce more broadly.

“Our PLM software applications, spanning both our process-centric and design-centric product families, are used by over 45,000 customers to manage product lifecyles for products ranging from individual machine parts to automobile engines to entire jumbo aircraft. Our applications enable PLM participants to work in a collaborative environment to facilitate innovation, shorten time to market, reduce manufacturing costs and improve product value. These are compelling attributes of our products and solutions.

“Our strategy is straightforward. Based on our leading position in product authoring, we want to provide leading PLM software applications enabling seamless product information exchange throughout the enterprise and with enterprise partners, and to establish DS as the provider of reference for 3D software applications."

NEW PRODUCT LAUNCHES

CATIA V5R6 incorporates major improvements to existing products and introduced 17 new products, bringing the total number of CATIA V5 products to 78. CATIA V5R6 significantly improves every development step of a product by providing companies of all sizes with a full range of PLM solutions to facilitate innovation and continuously increase design productivity across the collaborative digital enterprise in real time. With CATIA V5R6, DS delivers the new Component Application Architecture (CAA), an open architecture that allows users to integrate their own know-how into specialized CATIA applications. In CAA V5R6, companies benefit from an unprecedented openness that they can leverage across their PLM systems to their competitive advantage.

DELMIA Introduced Process Engineering™ Solutions that, when combined with existing DELMIA applications, provide the user with a complete solution for manufacturing design and optimization, from product conceptual design through the entire planning process and production execution. This release provides improved part motion definition, automatic path finding and exclusion of design contacts in collision checking. The V5 Knowledgeware functions can now be created referencing process activities. With V5R6, the new products enable the user to evaluate the visibility and the reachability of workstation components and to perform ergonomic analysis.

SolidWorks introduced SolidWorks 2001, the latest release of the company's award-winning, Windows®-based 3D mechanical design software. SolidWorks 2001 provides over 150 major customer-driven enhancements and innovations, unprecedented ease-of-use, and a simple, comprehensive migration path from a 2D to 3D design environment. SolidWorks 2001 offers major enhancements in user interaction, sheet metal creation, feature and part development, assembly design tools, drawing performance and Internet collaboration tools.

Smart Solutions launched SmartBOM™, a collaborative Bill of Materials (BOM) PLM solution. With over half of all components typically outsourced, collaboration around BOMs is key to product success. SmartBOM enables manufacturers to incorporate their suppliers and OEM vendors into the product definition process from as early as the prototype stage, and through engineering changes in a simple standard format. Further, SmartBOM, allows for management of the BOM throughout its lifecycle, from concept engineering changes, allowing people in and outside an organization to access and modify the BOMS and to communicate these changes to the originator and others.

Smart Solutions introduced mySmarTeam, which enables companies to communicate and collaborate with their supply chain, remote personnel and OEM vendors, connecting together engineering, manufacturing, procurement and sales, and also released mySmartMeeting, a powerful Web-based collaboration tool that enables its customers and their supply chains to collaborate on product development through a secure, online meeting space. Users can view, annotate and comment in real-time on drawings, BOMs, presentations, engineering change orders and other critical business information.

Spatial announced that Version 6.3 of its ACIS 3D Geometric Modeler is now available and is designed for technical excellence, enhanced quality and reliability of 3D solid modeling, and increased customer support throughout all stages of development.

ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS

DS announced its intention to acquire SRAC, which would position DS as the pre-eminent supplier of CAE and CAD integrated design analysis software in the process and design-centric markets. Additionally, it expands sales of CATIA V5 Analysis solutions by adding key analysis expertise, strengthening the long and successful DS-IBM partnership. CATIA customers will now benefit from SRAC's 15 years of experience and expertise in supporting analysis products and processes. SRAC's COSMOS™ product line, tailored to the design-centric market, complements the high-end CATIA V5 Analysis solutions for the process-centric market. These two solutions will redefine customer expectations for front-end analysis solutions and set new standards for CAE industry leadership.

Smart Solutions and Oce-USA partnered to deliver integrated product collaboration and enterprise print management solutions to manufacturers. The integration will provide customers with the ability to track, manage, archive and print a full range of product development information over networks and the Internet. Additionally, the resulting ability to share information enterprise-wide within an organization and throughout its extended enterprise via the Web will save customers substantial time and expense.

Spatial and Trace Software, an application developer for the mechanical and electrical marketplace, released ACIS-enabled Trace Parts for Autodesk Inventor™. Their strong OEM partnership strongly contributed to its rapid release of 3D Parts Library. Trace Parts for Inventor is one of the first ACIS-enabled applications to be released under Spatial's new OEM Partner Program and demonstrates how ACIS licensees benefit from Spatial's dedication to customer success.

ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE QUARTER

Hyundai Motor Company selected CATIA V5 Solutions for the digital design of its high quality automotive surfaces, underscoring CATIA's position as the core system for critical-path process body and trim engineering for Hyundai. By standardizing on CATIA within the body engineering process, Hyundai eliminates the need to convert data, which is expensive and time consuming.

Saab Automobile AB chose DELMIA's ERGOFab for operation management and line balancing to improve the efficiency in the new car design process and change management in production. Since September 1999, Saab Automobile has been using ERGOPlan and the module ERGOMas for Process Design in the Assembly Shop.

SANYO MACHINE WORKS (SMW) chose DELMIA solutions to shorten its design validation time and improve its system quality, replacing its in-house developed 2D and 3D simulation software. The implementation provides SMW with best of breed tools to check for the collisions of robots and welding guns, validate tact time and simulate an entire line system before building the actual production line systems. The solutions enable SMW to present attractive system proposals to clients from the beginning of the concept design stage. This decision resulted in tremendous efficiencies in terms of manpower, costs and overall productivity.

Karmann selected ENOVIA's digital enterprise solutions for managing its product development processes to reduce product development time while improving product quality in real time. The solutions also allow users to visualize, navigate, review and simulate digital mock-ups quickly, saving time and increasing responsiveness to customers.

Amada Ltd., Japan's largest metal-processing machinery supplier, chose SolidWorks' 3D CAD solutions to design its entire product line and will be installed in its operations throughout Japan, Europe and the United States. Amada expects the software to reduce production costs by 35% and cut design time in half. Amada selected SolidWorks for its powerful 3D modeling capabilities, extensive partner program and affordable price. It also purchased several SolidWorks partner applications for finite element analysis, fluid analysis, piping design and product data management.

RECOGNITION/AWARDS

SolidWorks received two top industry awards at the 2001 National Design Engineering Show for its online collaborative design. CADENCE Magazine presented SolidWorks’ collaborative tool set with its Show Stopper Award, and CADALYST Magazine bestowed its Best of Show Award on SolidWorks' eDrawings product. CADENCE cited SolidWorks’ collaborative tool set as products that “exemplify innovation, creativity, simplicity, and ease-of-use” and “move the CAD industry forward.” CADALYST’s Best of Show Award recognized SolidWorks’ eDrawings as a product “destined to change the way designers and engineers work.”

Smart Solutions was also awarded CADENCE's Show Stopper Award, citing Smart Solutions SmartBOM product, the SmartBriefcase family and strong performance of Smart Solutions as a powerful play in the manufacturing market space.

Statements above that are not historical facts but express expectations or objectives for the future, including but not limited to statements regarding the Company’s objective for 2001 revenue and EPS, are forward-looking statements (within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended). Such forward-looking statements are based on management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results or performances may differ materially from those in such statements due to, among other factors: (i) currency fluctuations (ii) global economic conditions, (iii) market demand for our products and services, (iv) new product developments and technological changes, and (v), our ability to recruit and retain skilled personnel. Unfavorable changes in any of the above or other factors described in the Company’s SEC reports, including the Form 20F for the year ended December 31, 1999, which was filed with the SEC on June 30th 2000, could materially affect the Company's financial position or results of operations.