Technically, ANSYS will acquire Livermore Software Technology Corporation (LSTC), maker of LS-DYNA but, ya know …

And it’s a BIG bucks deal: ANSYS will pay a purchase price $775 million, 60% cash and 40% via the issuance of ANSYS common stock to the current owners of LSTC. And get this: “ANSYS expects that the transaction will add $60 million to $65 million of non-GAAP revenue to its 2020 results and will be neutral to modestly accretive to non-GAAP operating margins and diluted earnings per share.” That’s a more than 10x multiple for a profitable-ish company. (Accounting for subscriptions and perpetuals makes this a bit fuzzy.)

ANSYS is holding its investor day tomorrow and may disclose more there.

A long time ago, ESI owned the vehicle crash market, with expensive, hard-to-use solutions. LSTC essentially stole the US market from them, with a simpler, cheaper solution — and, as ANSYS says, “The au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try has widely adopted … LS-DY­NA, a highly scalable multiphysics solver, to ac­cu­rate­ly pre­dict a vehicle’s be­hav­ior and the effects on occupants during a col­li­sion. To do this, LS-DYNA simulates the behavior of the vehicle structure and all components including tires, seats, seatbelts, airbags, accelerometers, sensors and batteries in a fully coupled mathematical framework. LSTC counts the vast majority of tier one automotive suppliers among its customers.”

Like everyone else, LSTC built out its portfolio and today has a lot more to offer than crash: structures, fluids, electromagnetics, optics, safety and machine learning will, says ANSYS “deliver a powerful solution for autonomous and electric vehicles to global automotive manufacturers and their suppliers”.

LSTC’s founder and CEO, John Hallquist said this about the deal” As an ANSYS partner for nearly 25 years, I am excited to formally join ANSYS and contribute to their place as the leader in engineering simulations. ANSYS is the perfect home for LSTC’s world-class team of scientists, mathematicians and engineers to continue advancing state-of-the-art, scalable and fully coupled, multiphysics computations. The ANSYS Workbench platform provides their customers with access to a uniquely broad portfolio of simulation technologies packaged into a user-friendly interface that is the envy of the industry. I expect that the combination of Workbench and LS-DYNA will expand our user base by at least an order of magnitude. Here at LSTC, nothing makes all of us happier than when our research enables more customers to imagine, design and implement ambitious projects that were previously impossible.”

It sounds as though Dr. Hallquist will, at least initially, be joining ANSYS; no word yet on other LSTC staff or how the companies will deal with areas of product and channel overlap.