Bentley Systems, Incorporated (NASDAQ:BSY) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

At $106 billion of net infrastructure value, BP is number 33 among the just released 2023 Bentley Infrastructure 500 top owners rankings available at the link here. As I believe our greatest ongoing growth opportunities are in Digital Twin advancements for operations and maintenance, it is gratifying to report that our current revenue run rate from serving 359 of these 500, 2023 top owners, increased by over 20% from the comparable revenue run rate for 2022. And while fully half of our revenue run rate is now from infrastructure owner operators in general, our revenue run rate from just these 500 top owners who like BP have the most again from compounding the value of their engineering data through infrastructure Digital Twins now exceeds 20% of our overall total.

Speaking of rankings, the annual ARC big tables for engineering design tools this year acknowledged BSY’s number one leadership not only in these infrastructure subsectors which they track individually, but now also for owner-operators in total. To me, that means we are on the right track towards ROI from infrastructure intelligence. Finally, I am glad to report since last quarter, two programmatic acquisitions while even more immaterial financially than most others each of these is significant strategically. Our iTwin Ventures approach has adapted to view the changed venture capital valuation environment opportunistically. Rather than a typical VC multitude of small stakes, we are now open to outright acquisitions of earlier-stage companies that can become significant within our Digital Twin ecosystem.

Blyncsy, our first acquisition in what I call asset analytics applies AI to crowd source data to detect for roadway operators, immediate maintenance conditions such as obstructions, quality of lane divider paint and/or actual versus planned construction zones. We will have more to say next year about consolidating asset analytics opportunities to go beyond our primary current business model, which charges primarily per user, to incrementally monetize Digital Twin subscriptions per asset and for instance, per mile as does Blyncsy. Last quarter, I discussed this year’s capital market induced slowdown in exploration for new mines and its impact on Seequent. While this pause in new mines continued during ’23 Q3, Seequent, which depends more on continuous operating and expansion of existing mines is still growing faster than BSY as a whole though less fast now than our other platform acquisition, Power Line Systems.

A source of greater balance and resilience for Seequent is our comprehensive agenda to expand the role of subsurface modeling for civil and environmental infrastructure, which for Seequent is now growing as fast as their mining mainstay. To further this, we announced that Year in Infrastructure the pending acquisition of Flow State Solutions extending Seequent’s market-leading geothermal comprehensiveness to the simulation of geothermal reservoirs, wellbores and surface networks. Like Seequent itself, Flow State Solutions is based in New Zealand, where geothermal already accounts for almost 20% of power production. And now from these quarterly directions and developments, over to Nicholas, for a more complete operational perspective on ’23 Q3.

Nicholas Cumins: Thank you, Greg. The engineer resource capacity gap is indeed top of mind. Two weeks ago, I attended a CEO Summit for top engineering firms organized by AEC advisers. There were two takeaways relevant for this conversation. First, firms recognize their role in solving the world’s biggest problems. Infrastructure is key to support economic growth, ensure energy security and address climate change. Second, firms cannot find enough engineers to do this important work, and they are looking for solutions. Software is how they will drive efficiency as one engineering firm CEO said during a panel conversation. This is a great summary of our current market conditions. Let’s start with Infrastructure sectors. The trends remained broadly in line with Q2.

ARR growth was once again led by public works and utilities. The sector continues to benefit from large infrastructure investments around the world, and we expect this to be the case for years to come. ARR growth and resources remain above company average. Seequent with its core business in mining performed as expected. As discussed last quarter, we see less funding available to finance new exploration projects. However, Seequent is used through the mining value chain and is well positioned to help mining companies be more efficient when under margin pressure. ARR growth in industrial softened somewhat, in particular with EPCs in India and Southeast Asia, focused on energy projects after many quarters of rapid expansion. The commercial and facilities sector remained flat.

Moving on to regions. Americas performed well once again led by North America with more federal money from IIJA being spent on a greater variety of infrastructure in the U.S. and given our strong momentum with the State Departments of Transportation. Our growth rate with DOTs has increased by 50% year-over-year. All the more impressive given that these departments increasingly outsource work to their ecosystem of engineering services firms. EMEA’s growth continued to benefit from public funding for projects across transportation, water and energy. Some of these projects were finalized at the Year in Infrastructure. We are also growing with engineering firms who are expanding their reach outside their home country due to the strong demand environment in the broader region.