Founded in 1985, listing on the ASX in 1999 and headquartered in San Diego in the US, Altium (ALU) is a software company that focusses on electronic design systems for Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design. PCBs form the foundation of all electronic goods in our lives including smartphones, tablets and computers.
“Altium’s key product, Altium Designer, is the most popular PCB design tool globally, with the largest professional userbase and over 60,000 commercial subscribers,” Jun Bei said.
“The company has been historically dominant among freelance designers but wasn’t as prevalent among the large enterprise segment (Enterprise).
“ALU estimates that it has approximately 40% market share in the small-to-medium business (SMB) segment (see the chart below), well ahead of its key competitors, Mentor (part of Siemens) and Cadence.
“With a growing dominance in the SMB market, Altium has in recent years turned its attention to the Enterprise market.
“Selling in the SMB space is quite low touch, with a heavy focus on the product (much is done through online sales coming directly through their website).
“However, Enterprise requires a completely different high-touch approach, with a direct sales team needing to convince C-suite executives on the value proposition.
“Altium started building its Enterprise sales team in 2019 and this has really started gaining traction.
“This traction is evidenced by the two cohort charts below.
“Key reference customers include John Deere, Mercedes Benz, NASA and Breville.
“Altium’s ultimate goal is the cloud-enablement of all industry processes involved in the creation of electronics hardware.
“This means bringing all parts of the electronics design and supply chain onto a single Altium-centric platform.
“Unlike many fast-growing techs, Altium is highly profitable.
“Its success in the Enterprise market will see this success continue,” Jun Bei said.
ALTIUM (ALU)
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