Coronavirus Has Put No Impact on Dassault Systemes, Says CEO Bernard Charles

The China lockdown owing to the deadly novel coronavirus has little impact on 3DExperience platform major Dassault Systemes as the company has no dependency on China for supply chain kind of activities, Bernard Charles, Vice Chairman and CEO, Dassault Systemes, said on Wednesday.

The overall confirmed cases in Mainland China reached 44,653 by Wednesday, with 1,113 deaths being confirmed by the Chinese authorities.

"We do have big labs in India but not in China. So we do not have any specific dependencies related to the supply chain kind of activities. But we are concerned about the slowdown in the industry globally," Charles told IANS.

"Our customers use the 3DExperience Cloud platform online. So even if people are working from home with good Internet access, they can perform design and training as usual," he added.

The economic damage caused by novel coronovirus to the Chinese economy is likely to be larger than SARS, leading to GDP estimates being revised downwards.

"We have a very sizable client list from China. It has been a strong dynamic market for us for many years. It is difficult to know at this point how long this is going to continue. We are concerned," Charles noted.

Citigroup has cut China's GDP forecast for the first quarter of 2020 to 3.6 per cent from the initial 4.8 per cent.

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Citigroup said the economic damage from coronavirus will be more than the SARS virus, assuming that the virus will be contained by the end of March. (IANS)