Dassault Systemes signs agreement to acquire EAI-DELTA from EAI

Leveraging on EAI-DELTA, DENEB and SAFEWORK, Dassault Systemes strengthens its leadership in the Digital Manufacturing market

Suresnes (France), March 1, 2000 – Dassault Systemes S.A. (NASDAQ: DASTY) today announced the signing of an agreement whereby Dassault Systemes acquires EAI-DELTA GmbH, a subsidiary of EAI, through a cash transaction for an amount of $ 31 million. Through this agreement, EAI-DELTA becomes a wholly–owned subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes. The acquisition will be slightly dilutive to Dassault Systèmes' earnings per share.

As a recognized supplier of digital manufacturing leading solutions, EAI-DELTA provides a family of software and expertise for customers to virtually define and simulate general manufacturing activities within the factory floor aimed at building the most flexible and efficient production system.

It focuses on production process planning and engineering of manual and partially automated assembly lines, and on plant operation control such as production work plans generation, line balancing, capacity planning, time and cost tuning.

The combination of EAI-DELTA, DENEB and SAFEWORK product lines will accelerate the execution of Dassault Systèmes' vision to address the Digital Manufacturing Market. Dassault Systemes offers an integrated suite of manufacturing software solutions to define and simulate manufacturing processes and to monitor and control the production consistently and concurrently with digital product, digital process and digital plant & resources managed through ENOVIA. The suite of applications allows development, simulation and optimization of Manufacturing activities involving human beings, robots and machine tools within the factory shop floor and Manufacturing processes for workcell, production line, up to extended enterprise production flow.

For the benefits of customers, DENEB and EAI-DELTA will take advantage of their sales presence in different geographies and of their complementary portfolios, to establish and develop a unique marketing, sales, support and service team dedicated to Digital Manufacturing.

DENEB and EAI-DELTA pursue their investments to develop their respective product offerings and will ensure the overall competitiveness and leadership of Dassault Systèmes' Digital Manufacturing solutions.

"We are very excited about the endorsement of the EAI-DELTA technology by Dassault Systèmes, we believe that the EAI-DELTA products are extremely competitive", said Dr. Woodhead, Director of Global Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering, General Motors Information Systems and Services. "The combination of DENEB DPM (Digital Process for Manufacturing) and EAI-DELTA ERGOPlan products will highly benefit the Automotive Manufacturing Process planner community. We think it's a key enabler to driving the Process Planning into the Virtual Factory vision of General Motors."

"We are happy to join the Dassault Systemes Group, with whom we share a common Digital Manufacturing vision and a common dedication to support customers," said Raimund Menges, EAI-DELTA Managing Director. "This transaction provides EAI-DELTA a financial stability to insure our long-term viability and growth. It enables the company to pursue its R&D investment to continuously enrich its product lines for the full benefit of the customers."

"This agreement transforms a competitive situation on the market into a synergy to solve customer issues and maximizes customer benefits", added Bernard Charles, President of Dassault Systèmes. "It assures customers that Dassault Systemes is the right strategic partner for Digital Manufacturing reinforcing our position as the unique provider of a complete integrated e-business solution with our CATIA, DENEB and ENOVIA brands. We address, through a unified Product, Process and Resource model, digital product definition, digital manufacturing, digital plant and digital operation."