Quickies: OnShape, Bentley, Hexagon and PP&M — oh my!

May 2, 2016 | Hot Topics

So much news, so little time. A quick roundup of interesting news:

A couple of weeks ago, OnShape reported that it has now sold shares valued at a total of $105 million, an increase of $25 million from last year’s announcement. By my reckoning, this brings total investment in OnShape to $169 million. This was a Reg 506(b) filing, which means that this is a private placement (in other words, not an initial public offering aka IPO) and, with 6 investors per the filing, OnShape remains exempt from the filing rules that apply to companies with more investors. What does this all mean? OnShape isn’t going to run out of cash any time soon; its deep pockets enable it to continue to experiment with licensing models while building out the platform.

Before you ask, I found out about the filing because I have an alert set up to tell me if OnShape (or any one of a whole lot of other companies that are required to file notices with the US Securities and Exchange Commission) submits anything to the SEC. There are many services that let you do this; I use secfilings.com.

Speaking of SEC filings, there’s no news on a Bentley Systems IPO. We were told last year that the company is waiting for market turmoil to smooth out; calm investors are likely to pay more. The S&P 500 Volatility Index as of Friday’s close was 15.87, lower than it has been but still higher than when Bentley signaled that an IPO might be happening. It’s also quite possible that Bentley’s 2015 and 2016 revenue could sag a bit as some of the company’s end markets, especially oil and gas, struggle with lower levels of capital project work. Bentley gets a significant chunk of revenue from subscriptions but it still might have to report a revenue decline; not a great thing when looking to maximize the offering price.

Finally, a quick acquisitions roundup. Hexagon recently snapped up sheet metal software Forming Technology Inc. (FTI), maker of FastForm. FastForm is used for complex sheetmetal shapes, like car doors, where feasibility studies are carried out to simulate the design and manufacturing process, and determine if it can be made more cost-effective. FTI is part of Hexagon’s strategy to create a design-make-validate process that plays to Hexagon’s existing metrology offerings. Hexagon also acquired AICON 3D Systems, an optical metrology company for industrial manufacturing — not surprising, with a strong presence in the automotive industry.

Last but not least, Hexagon’s Intergraph PP&M business acquired its partner  HostSure, the cloud services platform behind PP&M’s SmartPlant Cloud solution. According to the announcement, HostSure has helped deploy SmartPlant Cloud in 17 countries, to over 20 engineering and owner operator companies.

We’re still in the midst of earnings; I’m working on write-ups of Dassault Systemes’ and ESI’s recent results. ANSYS reports on Thursday.