#PURCHASE OF ALTIUM 10 SOFTWARE#
I can’t see anyone giving them money for just “whatever” future use they haven’t thought about yet.Altium Designer is one of the most popular of the high end PCB design software packages on the market today. One thing is for sure, Altium know who they want to buy and would have pitched this to the institutional investors. And/or perhaps with the new push into the Maker market they want to own and tie in a PCB manufacturer and assembler? That would make sense from a strategic point of view.
![purchase of altium 10 purchase of altium 10](https://www.3ds.com/fileadmin/depositary/alliances/CRM_PARTATT/20150800/PPR0000268_2MECODES_Altium_-_CATIA_V5_or_Solidworks_Integration.jpg)
But hey, I wouldn’t put it past them.Ī component search and integration company wouldn’t surprise me though, that is another key emerging area. Can you hear the groan from here? I sure hope they keep focus on the core PCB tool (as they have promised), and not go off on some silly adventure buying a cloud services company or some such. One thing that does scare me is the further emphasis on the Internet of Things and Web 3.0, and all that cloudy stuff.
![purchase of altium 10 purchase of altium 10](https://drugtruthaustralia.org/img/907229.jpg)
And nothing that really hints at who they are going to buy or why. There is lots of interesting stuff in Altium’s latest Investor Presentation, but not much we haven’t seen before. Not only that, but Eagle wouldn’t be for sale, it is far too strategically important to Element 14. It’s real, I’ve been given a sneak peek at it, because they wanted my feedback on it after my rant shook them up a bit and helped them change direction (for the better):
#PURCHASE OF ALTIUM 10 FREE#
Because Altium really do have their own free / low cost package coming out soon to compete head-to-head with Eagle and others. So it wouldn’t surprise me if they bought a 3D CAD tool company for better integration there.Īnd before anyone mentions it, no, I’m pretty sure they are not buying Eagle or another low end player. That would give them the signal integrity solution they badly need.Īn Autorouter that actually works would be high on the list too.Īltium Designer has great 3D CAD integration, but no 3D CAD editing capability. Polar Instruments immediately comes to mind. Things like signal integrity, auto routing, simulation, thermal analysis, and you can no doubt think of other areas. Whoever it is I certainly hope they don’t blow it like they did with several acquisitions on the past (*cough* 15% of the company for Morfik *cough*).īut is seems Altium are much more level headed these days, so I think they will do something good with it.Īltium does have several weaknesses in key areas needed to enable their push into the higher end of the market as they have promised investors. So who is Altium going to buy with all this influx of new institutional cash? I wonder is any other related company has also jumped? Hmm… It seems that someone has caught wind of this in the last week or two, because the share price has rocketed just before the trading halt. So what’s left? Well, it seems pretty obvious that Altium is gearing up for a big acquisition (or two?). And it can’t be because they want to buy some small-time company, they could also do that with the cash to hand. And that would of course be a silly reason for any institution to invest in them. So it can’t be because they want to hire more staff, they could easily do that with the cash to hand. So why does a company with zero debt, a lot of cash, record sales, a new product about to (hopefully) shake up a new market, and no real history taking money, want with a sudden influx of money from institutional investors? ExpansionĬompanies take money in order to expand into bigger markets and/or buy companies to enable that to happen. Altium has record sales, and the highest share price in over a decade.Altium is about to announce their new FREE (+ low cost) package and enter the low cost PCB tool market as they have promised.
![purchase of altium 10 purchase of altium 10](https://resources.altium.com/sites/default/files/docs-images/-w-320_156.jpg)
Altium has plenty of cash in the bank, $22M of it or so.Altium has always, and continues to have essentially zero debt.Altium have not taken investment since they originally publicly floated the company 15 years ago in 1999 in order to raise capital to buy several companies and their technology in order to get into the embedded system/FPGA space (which they ultimately failed at as everyone but them expected).Now, this is very interesting indeed for several reasons: “Pending an announcement by Altium in relation to a proposed capital raising by institutional investors” Today came the news from the ASX that Altium shares have been put on a voluntary trading halt: