Altair revenue up 11% in Q2 on strength in CAE

Altair last night announced results for Q2 2022 — and exceeded expectations in just about all revenue categories.

The details:

• Total Q2 revenue was $133 million, up 11% as reported and up 16% in constant currencies, or cc
• Software product revenue was $117 million, up 17% (up 23% cc)
• Within Software, License revenue was $ 83 million, up 24%, with term licenses contributing $72 million (up 26%) and perpetual licenses, $10 million, up 13%
• Maintenance revenue was up 4% to $34 million
• Professional services revenue was down 51% to $1 million
• Software-related services revenue was basically flat at just over $7 million, and client engineering services revenue was down 32% to $7 million as Altair continues to transition to higher-margin businesses

Altair didn’t indicate how much of this growth was from acquisitions; it definitely wasn’t zero. The company acquired Concept Engineering in June and two other companies earlier in the year–which likely had a tiny impact on these results–and World Programming in December, which likely had a larger impact on Q2.

CEO Jim Scapa said that he has confidence in Altair’s performance in the second half of 2022: “While we are in a period of geopolitical and economic uncertainty, I am confident Altair’s culture, customer relationships, high recurring revenue and utilization, high-value business model, and exceptional technology leaves us well-positioned for the remainder of the year.” Altair doesn’t offer specifics, but Mr. Scapa did say that the CAE portfolio continues to drive results and that the HPC business is exceeding expectations.

In response to the usual “what might you buy next” question, Mr. Scapa simply said that the company continues to have an appetite for acquisitions, especially as valuations come down to more reasonable levels.

For Q3, Altair sees total revenue in the range of $115 million to $120 million, (down 1% to 5%) with software essentially flat. For 2022, a range of $555 million to $566 million (up 4% to 6%) with software revenue up 7% to 9% — and potentially up as much as 5% more in contact currencies. This is more or less what Altair projected earlier this year, adjusted for the rapidly strengthening US Dollar.