PLMish earnings so far: mostly cautious but upbeat

Bentley Systems and Trimble reported results yesterday, so while we have weeks to go still in this earnings season, it seems reasonable to do a recap of the main themes so far. As you may know, I listen to a lot of earnings for the end-buyers of our PLMish technologies since their prospects determine what technologies they invest in — or don’t, if times are tough. We’ll start there and then look at a few of the PLMish companies that have reported results for the quarter that ended on June 30.

TL;DR: so far, not awful.

My top 10 takeaways so far (and I urge you to listen to the companies’ calls/read the materials for yourselves, so I have links for you to follow if interested):

• Infrastructure spending, whether from governments for electrification, roads and bridges, or from companies for energy, data centers, and other assets, remains strong in much of the world and continues to drive a lot of PLMish buying. Caterpillar, the giant maker of construction, farming, and mining equipment, for example, reported that they continue to see resilient demand across their business. Fluor, the engineering, procurement, and construction company, sees lots of interest in semiconductor fabs and data centers — eventually. They’re not yet seeing contract awards for the data centers themselves, but are seeing interest in the infrastructure surrounding the data centers (water, power, etc.) Cummins, the engine maker, saw solid demand for power generation and distribution, but weak interest in its truck engines. And so it went across industries: what could be considered essential infrastructure is still being bought; spending on more discretionary items seems to be slowed as people watch economic data.
• Consumer goods is a lot less clear. Many companies report weak demand: Procter and Gamble said that consumers seem to be “trading down” in their purchases, opting for cheaper alternatives in a product category that’s perhaps in a smaller, less expensive container. Apple, on the other hand, reported that iPhone and Mac sales went up, possibly because people bought in advance of potential tariffs. Everyone I listened to said that consumers are worried about jobs, inflation, and … those tariffs. 
• Almost everyone expects tariffs to become more of a factor for the rest of 2025 (and beyond?) as rates that are set to go into force today might still be renegotiated. Companies will eventually have to decide whether to pass the added costs on to buyers or try to absorb them — the first could affect sales, since buyers may not buy at the elevated price; the second would affect profits, which would make investors unhappy. Toyota Motor, for example, today said US tariffs will cost it an estimated ¥1.4 trillion —that’s US$9.5 billion— this year, assuming rates stay as they are. The company said that it would absorb this cost, lowering profit for the year by 16%.
• AI is real and is very interesting to just about everyone, though adoption and implementation are really, really lumpy. A lot of the industrial companies I listened to over the last few weeks (and remember that these are the biggest companies on the planet, in many cases, with robust IT departments), are still moving from experimenting with AI in customer service, HR and other parts of their businesses, to reduce the cost of human mistakes. Many organizations have created AI “centers of excellence” to figure out what data they have, create governance and AI roadmaps, explore what their vendors supply, and so on. 
• All of the PLMish vendors are talking about AI, with most taking a measured approach to bringing out products. The problem remains the commercial model: if an agent makes an engineer 5% faster, do you charge 5% more for the tool? What if the other engineers in the department don’t use AI, do you charge them less? How can you monetize AI at a fair rate for all parties? TBD. Autodesk reports results in late August and may have something to say about this; they led the move to subscriptions in the PLMish space and could set the tone for others on this, too.
• Specific to our PLMish part of the world, Dassault Systèmes reported Q2 results that largely met expectations. Software revenue was up 5% in constant currencies (cc), Industrial Innovation software revenue was up 9% cc, with DS calling out SIMULIA, CATIA and ENOVIA as contributors to growth. Mainstream Innovation software revenue was up 3% cc as “SOLIDWORKS had strong subscription growth”; and, finally, Life Sciences software revenue was flat. DS stuck to its 4% cc constant currency growth expectations for 2025, even though that will require a pretty steep acceleration in Q4. DS still sees big deals shifting out of one quarter and into another, but “some deals that came from H1 into H2 are giving us confidence and visibility into Q3.” Read more here: https://investor.3ds.com/
• PTC’s FQ3 earnings call focused on “continued resilience in a dynamic macroenvironment” as some sales cycles lengthened after the first round of US tariffs were announced. The general sense is that these stabilized as the quarter ended. CAD revenue (which includes all PTC authoring tools, not just Creo) grew 8% cc, while PLM revenue was up 10% cc. PTC highlighted strength in Creo, Windchill, Codebeamer, and IOT. PTC slightly updated its guidance for the rest of its fiscal year (ending September) to total revenue of $2,570 million to $2,630 million, up 12% to 14%, assuming that the economy doesn’t significantly improve throughout the rest of this quarter. Read more here: https://investor.ptc.com/investor-overview/default.aspx
• Moving over to AEC vendors, Nemetschek is on a roll. The company preannounced really good results and then followed up with the details. Q2  revenue was up 22% cc; Design segment revenue was up 18% as reported cc, Build was up 36% cc; Manage was down 1%  cc, and Media was up 6% cc. On the conference call, management said that, excluding the impact of multi-year deals signed in Q2, Design organic growth would have been in the low teens. Build saw strong momentum from Bluebeam and GoCanvas — and this matters because management also said that they are actively targeting acquisitions (my interpretation: likely for the Build segment). Given the strong results so far this year, Nemetschek updated its FY25 revenue growth guidance to 20% to 22% cc from prior 18% at the midpoint. One interesting thing about Nemetschek: it recently created a centralized R&D team to create unified offerings for cloud, AI, and similar foundational tech that can be used across brands. The first release of its Agentic AI Assistants is starting to roll out and, from what I’ve seen, is already useful. Read more about Q2 here: https://ir.nemetschek.com/en
• Bentley, which competes with Nemetschek in design and build of buildings but offers design and asset management technologies for subsurface, electric grids, and a lot more, reported strong Q2 results, with total revenue up 10%. The company said it is seeing a consistent demand environment, with especially solid demand for Power Line Systems’ electricity grid design and management offering, asset management products, and its Seequent subsurface modeling solution. Bentley reiterated its guidance for the rest of the year. I’ll be at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure in October and look forward to seeing how its first agentic AI design product, Open Site+, has matured since last year. Stay tuned for more on that. More about Q2: https://investors.bentley.com/
• Trimble, which competes with Bentley and Nemetschek on structural design and CAD, but primarily focuses on construction in its AEC offering, also reported strong 2Q results, with total organic adjusted revenue up 9%. Looking just at AEC, AECO revenue was up 17% on an organic basis, driven by demand for its Construction One offering. Trimble upped its forecasts for the rest of the year, guiding to adjusted AECO revenue growth in the mid-teens percent. Interestingly, Trimble highlights SketchUp (the CAD product it bought from Google in 2012) in its commentary, noting that “4.4 million SketchUp models were created in the quarter” and “SketchUp remains core to the workflow of architects and designers around the world.” No revenue data, though. More about Q2: https://investor.trimble.com/overview/default.aspx

There are so many more to cover, that have already announced results — and we still have to hear from Autodesk on 28 August, Stratasys and 3D Systems next week, Keysight on 19 August, and Synopsys on 9 September. More soon.