MATTHEW BYATT
Managing Partner
PTC responds to mid-market SaaS PLM need with $715m Arena Solutions acquisition
PTC is set to acquire product lifecycle management leader Arena Solutions, enabling PTC to deliver a complete CAD and PLM SaaS solution to the growing mid-market.
Against a background of long-term market growth for SaaS-based product development software, PTC has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Arena Solutions which serves more than 1,200 customers in the electronics, high-tech and medical device industries. The deal will extend PTC’s presence in the attractive mid-market sector where SaaS solutions are becoming the standard.
The Arena Solutions product realisation platform combines product lifecycle management (PLM) and quality and requirements management. This technology enables collaboration between participants throughout the product design and manufacturing process and beyond, into the extended supply chain.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a dramatic acceleration in the market’s willingness to adopt SaaS technology. As businesses demand secure, collaborative, cloud computing environments, PTC’s Arena Solutions acquisition is set to complement its 2019 acquisition of Onshape for $470m, a SaaS leader in CAD and collaborative design tools.
These two deals bring together a range of CAD and PLM SaaS products under the PTC brand, positioning the firm as a leader in this growing market.
Arena Solutions is in a strong financial position following double digit growth in 2019 which is reflected in its annualised recurring revenue figure of around $50m. PTC’s acquisition of Arena Solutions for $715m in cash is expected to be neutral to PTC’s FY’21 cashflow. The deal is expected to complete in PTC’s fiscal Q2 in 2021 subject to the usual closing conditions and regulatory reviews.
“PTC’s $715m acquisition of Arena, at a valuation of 14x recurring revenue, provides it with a full CAD / PLM cloud solution and signals that the engineering and design software market is ready to transition to SaaS. We expect other CAD players will follow suite in looking to bulk up SaaS propositions in this space.”
Matthew Byatt | Managing Partner
Matthew is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Acuity and leads the Acuity Advisors’ Deeptech practice.
Matthew has held senior leadership and corporate finance positions with some of the UK’s most successful and influential technology and consultancy companies. Roles with ARM, McKinsey and Cadence have given Matthew an exceptional insight into the world’s most successful businesses and a number of the UK’s eminent start-ups, underpinning his success at Acuity.
Matthew has considerable experience across a broad range of technology sectors throughout the UK, US and Asia, ranging from nanotechnology, semiconductor and cleantech to digital media and internet businesses. It’s experience that has given him a robust, well-developed and international network. Having also run and successfully exited his own business, Matthew has a deep understanding of the financial and emotional aspects of this demanding process, bringing a unique and authoritative perspective to each business sale.
One of Matthew’s strengths is understanding complex technical value propositions, one of the benefits of training as an electronic engineer. He gets to the heart of what drives a company’s value and communicates this persuasively to potential buyers and investors. Matthew understands a buyer’s motivation intuitively and delivers a compelling rationale for why a business sale should be of strategic interest. His insight consistently yields higher deal values and results in great successes for his clients.