Altair beats Q2 forecasts and raises 2021 guidance

Altair reported results last week — and like others in our PLMish universe, they were better than expected. The details:

• Total revenue in Q2 was $120 million, up 22% and $8 million ahead of expectations. Altair doesn’t do the constant currency thing for all of its revenue categories, but CFO Matt Brown said that the company saw a poisitive impact of $3.7 million in Q2 because of changes in exchange rates, but still, this was a revenue beat
• Software revenue was $100 million, also up 22%, versus expectations of $92 million to $95 million
• The good Q2 performance caused Altair to raise its guidance for the rest of the year, to total revenue of $512 million to $518 million
• CEO Jim Scapa said that Q2 results were supported by all the key verticals and geographies. Automotive, Altair’s largest vertical, has been “pretty robust for the first half of the year, because all these companies are investing so much” — a trend we’re hearing across the PLMish landscape. End-industry companies are investing ahead of the anticipated pickup in demand. In Altair’s case, Mr. Scapa said, automotive players are adding capability in electrification, communications, analytics, and computing
• About analytics: Altair saw some competitve wins againts analystics-speicifc suppliers, but also reports seeing interest from medical product makers, motorsports companies and others, Mr. Scapa said, who are looking at using data analytics in their engineering applications. That’s good news (for Altair and the users) since it will allow them to getinto using analytics to guide their engineering processes –ultimately getting better designs to market, more quickly
• Altair doesn’t give specifics, but Mr. Scapa said that “the numbers across HPC, simulation and data analytics are all pretty robust for the first half of the year. We’re feeling really positive, running on all cylinders.”

To recap; a great Q2, guidance for Q3 2021 total revenue of $112 million to $115 million, up 5% to 8% over last year, and full-year 2021 revenue guidance to between $512 million and $518 million. Mr. Brown said that “Overall, we’re encouraged by our customer demand and pipeline of opportunities we see in the second half … This was another great quarter for Altair. We’re executing on our mission to transform enterprise decision-making by offering products and technology that delight our customers.”